WHAT  IS  COMING  ? 

A   EUROPEAN    FORECAST 

H-G- WELLS   ^ 


Columbia  ^^nitter^ttp 


LIBRARY 


WHAT  IS  COMING? 


MR.  WELLS  has  also  written 
The  following  Novels  : 

LOVE  AND   MR.   LEWISHAM 

KIPPS  MK.   POLLY 

THE   WHEELS   OF  CHANCE 

THE  NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

ANN   VERONICA  MARRIAGE 

TONO    BUNGAY  BEALBY 

THE  PASSIONATE  FRIENDS 

THE  WIFE  OF  SIR  ISAAC   HARMON 

THE  RESEARCH    MAGNIFICENT 

Numerous  short  stories  collected 
under  the  titles 

THIRTY  STRANGE  STORIES 
TWELVE    STORIES    AND    A   DREAM 

The  following  fantastic  and  imag- 
inative Romances  : 

THE  TIME  MACHINE 
"■^-THE    WAR   OF  THE   WORLDS 
THE    SEA   LADY 
THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT 
IN   THE  DAYS   OF  THE  COMET 
THE  SLEEPER  AWAKES 
THE  FOOD  OF  THE  GODS 
THE   WAR  IN   THE  AIR 
THE  FIRST   MEN   IN   THE   MOON 
„     THE  ISLAND  OF  DOCTOR   MOREAU 
and   THE  WORLD  SET  FREE 

A  series  of  books  upon  social  and 
political  questions  of  which 

ANTICIPATIONS    (1900) 
A    MODERN    UTOPIA 

FIRST     AND     LAST     THINGS     (RELI- 
GION AND  PHILOSOPHY) 
NEW    WORLDS   FOR  OLD 
THE  FUTURE  IN   AMERICA 

and  SOCIAL  forces  in  England  and 

AMERICA 

are  the  chief.     And  two  little 
books     about     children's     play 
called 

FLOOR  GAMES  and  LITTLE  WARS 


WHAT  IS  COMING? 

A  European  Forecast 


S        t  9 


^M:.;ii. ''wells 


N^m  fork 
THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1916 


'  Copyrighri91»'    ' 
Bv  THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  CO. 

Copyright  1916 

By  H.  G.  wells 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  May,  1916 


GIVEN  BY 

CHARLES  OOWNiX  HAZBM 

JULY  1937 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    Forecasting  the  Future 1 

II     The  End  of  the  War 29 

III  Nations  in  Liquidation 50 

IV  Braintree,  Booking,  and  the  Future  of 

the  World 76 

Y    How  Far  Will  Europe  Go  Towards  So- 

CL^ISM? 96 

YI  Lawyer  and  Press 125 

YII  The  New  Education 148 

YIII  What  the  War  Is  Doing  for  Women     .     .  159 

IX  The  New  Map  of  Europe 189 

X    The  United  States,  France,  Britain,  and 

Russia 215 

XI    **  The  White  Man's  Burthen  "      .      .     .  238 

XII    The  Outlook  for  the  Germans  ....  263 


WHAT  IS  COMING? 

I 

FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE 

Prophecy  may  vary  between  being  an  intellec- 
tual amusement  and  a  serious  occupation;  serious 
not  only  in  its  intentions,  but  in  its  consequences. 
For  it  is  the  lot  of  prophets  wbo  frighten  or  dis- 
appoint to  be  stoned.  But  for  some  of  us  moderns, 
who  have  been  touched  with  the  spirit  of  science, 
prophesying  is  almost  a  habit  of  mind.  Science  is 
very  largely  analysis  aimed  at  forecasting.  The 
test  of  any  scientific  law  is  our  verification  of  its 
anticipations.  The  scientific  training  develops  the 
idea  that  whatever  is  going  to  happen  is  really  here 
now — if  only  one  could  see  it.  And  when  one  is 
taken  by  surprise  the  tendency  is  not  to  say  with 
the  untrained  man,  "  Now^,  who'd  ha'  thought  it?  " 
but  "  Now,  what  was  it  we  overlooked?  " 

Everything  that  has  ever  existed  or  that  will 
ever  exist  is  here  —  for  any  one  who  has  eyes 
to  see.     But  some  of  it  demands  eyes  of  superhu- 


2  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

man  penetration.  Some  of  it  is  patent;  we  are 
almost  as  certain  of  next  Christmas  and  the  tides 
of  the  year  1960  and  the  death  before  3000  A.  d.  of 
everybody  now  alive  as  if  these  things  had  already 
happened.  And  below  that  level  of  certainty,  but 
still  at  a  very  high  level  of  certainty,  there  are 
such  things  as  that  men  will  probably  be  making 
aeroplanes  of  an  improved  pattern  in  1950,  or  that 
there  will  be  a  through  railway  connection  between 
Constantinople  and  Bombay  and  between  Baku 
and  Bombay  in  the  next  half-century.  And  from 
such  grades  of  certainty  as  this  one  may  come 
down  the  scale  until  the  most  obscure  mystery  of 
all  is  reached :  the  mystery  of  the  individual.  Will 
England  presently  produce  a  military  genius,  or 
what  will  Mr.  Belloc  say  the  day  after  to-morrow? 
The  most  accessible  field  for  the  prophet  is  the 
heavens;  the  least  is  the  secret  of  the  jumping  cat 
within  the  human  skull.  How  will  so-and-so  be- 
have, and  how  will  the  nation  take  it?  For  such 
questions  as  that  we  need  the  subtlest  guesses  of 
all. 

Yet  even  to  such  questions  as  these  the  sharp, 
observant  man  may  risk  an  answer  with  something 
rather  better  than  an  even  chance  of  being  right. 

The  present  writer  is  a  prophet  by  use  and  wont. 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  3 

He  is  more  interested  in  to-morrow  than  he  is  in  to- 
day, and  the  past  is  just  material  for  future  guess- 
ing. "  Think  of  the  men  who  have  walked  here  I '' 
said  a  tourist  in  the  Roman  Coliseum.  It  was  a 
Futurist  mind  that  answered :  "  Think  of  the  men 
who  will.''  It  is  surely  as  interesting  that  pres- 
ently some  founder  of  the  World  Republic,  some  ob- 
stinate opponent  of  militarism  or  legalism,  or  the 
man  who  will  first  release  atomic  energy  for  human 
use,  will  walk  along  the  Via  Sacra  as  that  Cicero 
or  Giordano  Bruno  or  Shelley  have  walked  there 
in  the  past.  To  the  prophetic  mind  all  history  is 
and  will  continue  to  be  a  prelude.  The  prophetic 
type  will  steadfastly  refuse  to  see  the  world  as  a 
museum ;  it  will  insist  that  here  is  a  stage  set  for  a 
drama  that  perpetually  begins. 

Now  this  forecasting  disposition  has  led  the 
writer  not  only  to  publish  a  book  of  deliberate 
prophesying,  called  Anticipations y  but  almost  with- 
out premeditation  to  scatter  a  number  of  more  or 
less  obvious  prophecies  through  his  other  books. 
From  first  to  last  he  has  been  writing  for  twenty 
years,  so  that  it  is  possible  to  check  a  certain  pro- 
portion of  these  anticipations  by  the  things  that 
have  happened.  Some  of  these  shots  have  hit  re- 
markably close  to  the  bulFs-eye  of  reality ;  there  are 


4  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

a  number  of  inners  and  outers,  and  some  clean 
misses.  Much  that  he  wrote  about  in  anticipation 
is  now  established  commonplace.  In  1894  there 
were  still  plenty  of  sceptics  of  the  possibility  either 
of  automobiles  or  aeroplanes ;  it  was  not  until  1898 
that  Mr.  S.  P.  Langley  (of  the  Smithsonian  Insti- 
tution) could  send  the  writer  a  photograph  of  a 
heavier-than-air  flying  machine  actually  in  the  air. 
There  were  articles  in  the  monthly  magazines  of 
those  days  proving  that  flying  was  impossible.  One 
of  the  writer's  luckiest  shots  was  a  description  (in 
Anticipations  in  1900)  of  trench  warfare,  and  of  a 
deadlock  almost  exactly  upon  the  lines  of  the  situa- 
tion after  the  battle  of  the  Marne.  And  he  was  for- 
tunate (in  the  same  work)  in  his  estimate  of  the 
limitations  of  submarines.  He  anticipated  Sir 
Percy  Scott  by  a  year  in  his  doubts  of  the  decisive 
value  of  great  battleships  (see  An  Englishman 
Looks  at  the  World)  ;  and  he  was  sound  in  denying 
the  decadence  of  France;  in  doubting  (before  the 
Eusso- Japanese  struggle)  the  greatness  of  the 
power  of  Russia,  which  was  still  in  those  days  a 
British  bogey ;  in  making  Belgium  the  battleground 
in  a  coming  struggle  between  the  mid-European 
Powers  and  the  rest  of  Europe ;  and  ( he  believes )  in 
foretelling  a  renascent  Poland.     Long  before  Eu- 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  5 

rope  was  familiar  with  the  engaging  personality  of 
the  German  Crown  Prince,  he  represented  great  air- 
ships sailing  over  England  ( which  country  had  been 
too  unenterprising  to  make  any)  under  the  com- 
mand of  a  singularly  anticipatory  Prince  Karl,  and 
in  The  World  Set  Free  the  last  disturber  of  the 
peace  is  a  certain  "  Balkan  Fox.''  In  saying,  how- 
ever, here  and  there  that  "before  such  a  year  so- 
and-so  will  happen,"  or  that  "  so-and-so  will  not  oc- 
cur for  the  next  twenty  years,''  he  was  generally 
pretty  widely  wrong;  most  of  his  time  estimates 
are  too  short;  he  foretold,  for  example,  a  special 
motor  track  apart  from  the  high  road  between  Lon- 
don and  Brighton  before  1910,  which  is  still  a 
dream,  but  he  doubted  if  effective  military  aviation 
or  aerial  fighting  would  be  possible  before  1950, 
which  is  a  miss  on  the  other  side.  He  will  draw  a 
modest  veil  over  certain  still  wider  misses  that  the 
idle  may  find  for  themselves  in  his  books ;  he  prefers 
to  count  the  hits  and  leave  the  reckoning  of  the 
misses  to  those  who  will  find  a  pleasure  in  it. 

Of  course,  these  prophecies  of  the  writer's  were 
made  upon  a  basis  of  very  generalised  knowledge. 
What  can  be  done  by  a  really  sustained  research 
into  a  particular  question  —  especially  if  it  is  a 
question  essentially  mechanical  —  is  shown  by  the 


6  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

work  of  a  Frenchman  all  too  neglected  by  the 
trumpet  of  fame  —  Clement  Ader.  M.  Ader  was 
probably  the  first  man  to  get  a  mechanism  up  into 
the  air  for  something  more  than  a  leap.  His  Eole, 
as  General  Mensier  testifies,  prolonged  a  jump  as 
far  as  50  metres  as  early  as  1890.  In  1897  his 
Avion  fairly  flew.  (This  is  a  year  ahead  of  the 
date  of  my  earliest  photograph  of  S.  P.  Langley's 
aeropile  in  mid-air.)  This,  however,  is  beside  our 
present  mark.  The  fact  of  interest  here  is  that  in 
1908,  when  flying  was  still  almost  incredible,  M. 
Ader  published  his  Aviation  Militaire.  Well, 
that  was  seven  years  ago,  and  men  have  been  fight- 
ing in  the  air  now  for  a  year,  and  there  is  still  noth- 
ing being  done  that  M.  Ader  did  not  see,  and  which 
we,  if  we  had  had  the  wisdom  to  attend  to  him, 
might  not  have  been  prepared  for.  There  is  much 
that  he  foretells  which  is  still  awaiting  its  inevit- 
able fulfilment.  So  clearly  can  men  of  adequate 
knowledge  and  sound  reasoning  power  see  into  the 
years  ahead  in  all  such  matters  of  material  develop- 
ment. 

But  it  is  not  with  the  development  of  mechanical 
inventions  that  the  writer  now  proposes  to  treat. 
In  these  papers  he  intends  to  hazard  certain  fore- 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  7 

casts  about  the  trend  of  events  in  the  next  decade 
or  so.  Mechanical  novelties  will  probably  play  a 
very  small  part  in  that  coming  history.  This 
worldwide  war  means  a  general  arrest  of  invention 
and  enterprise,  except  in  the  direction  of  the  war 
business.  Ability  is  concentrated  upon  that;  the 
types  of  ability  that  are  not  applicable  to  warfare 
are  neglected ;  there  is  a  vast  destruction  of  capital 
and  a  waste  of  the  savings  that  are  needed  to  finance 
new  experiments.  Moreover,  we  are  killing  off 
many  of  our  brightest  young  men.  It  is  fairly  safe 
to  assume  that  there  will  be  very  little  new  furni- 
ture on  the  stage  of  the  world  for  some  considerable 
time;  that  if  there  is  much  difference  in  the  roads 
and  railways  and  shipping  it  will  be  for  the  worse ; 
that  architecture,  domestic  equipment,  and  so  on, 
will  be  fortunate  if  in  1924  they  stand  where  they 
did  in  the  spring  of  1914.  In  the  trenches  of  France 
and  Flanders,  and  on  the  battlefields  of  Russia,  the 
Germans  have  been  spending  and  making  the  world 
spend  the  comfort,  the  luxury  and  the  progress  of 
the  next  quarter-century.  There  is  no  accounting 
for  tastes.  But  the  result  is  that,  while  it  was  pos- 
sible for  the  writer  in  1900  to  write  Anticipations 
of  the  Reaction  of  Mechanical  Progress  upon  Hu- 


8  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

man  Life  and  Thought,  in  1916  his  anticipations 
must  belong  to  quite  another  system  of  conse- 
quences. 

The  broad  material  facts  before  us  are  plain 
enough.  It  is  the  mental  facts  that  have  to  be  un- 
ravelled. It  isn't  now  a  question  of  ''  What  thing 
—  what  faculty  —  what  added  power  will  come  to 
hand,  and  how  will  it  affect  our  ways  of  living?  " 
It  is  a  question  of  "  How  are  people  going  to  take 
these  obvious  things  —  waste  of  the  world's  re- 
sources, arrest  of  material  progress,  the  killing  of  a 
large  moiety  of  the  males  in  nearly  every  European 
country,  and  universal  loss  and  unhappiness? " 
We  are  going  to  deal  with  realities  here,  at  once 
more  intimate  and  less  accessible  than  the  effects  of 
mechanism. 

As  a  preliminary  reconnaissance,  as  it  were,  over 
the  region  of  problems  we  have  to  attack,  let  us  con- 
sider the  difficulties  of  a  single  question,  which  is 
also  a  vital  and  central  question  in  this  forecast. 
We  shall  not  attempt  a  full  answer  here,  because 
too  many  of  the  factors  must  remain  unexamined; 
later,  perhaps,  we  may  be  in  a  better  position  to  do 
so.  This  question  is  the  probability  of  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  long  world  peace.  At  the  outset  of 
the  war  there  was  a  very  widely  felt  hope  among 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  9 

the  intellectuals  of  the  world  that  this  war  might 
clear  up  most  of  the  outstanding  international  prob- 
lems, and  prove  the  last  war.  The  writer,  looking 
across  the  gulf  of  experience  that  separates  us  from 
1914,  recalls  two  pamphlets  whose  very  titles  are 
eloquent  of  this  feeling  —  The  War  that  will  End 
War,  and  The  Peace  of  the  World.  Was  the 
hope  expressed  in  those  phrases  a  dream?  Is  it  al- 
ready proven  a  dream?  Or  can  we  read  between 
the  lines  of  the  war  news,  diplomatic  disputations, 
threats  and  accusations,  political  wrangiings  and 
stories  of  hardship  and  cruelty  that  now  fill  our 
papers,  anything  that  still  justifies  a  hope  that  these 
bitter  years  of  world  sorrow  are  the  darkness  before 
the  dawn  of  a  better  day  for  mankind?  Let  us 
handle  this  problem  for  a  preliminary  examination. 
What  is  really  being  examined  here  is  the  power 
of  human  reason  to  prevail  over  passion  —  and  cer- 
tain other  restraining  and  qualifying  forces.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that,  if  one  could  canvass  all 
mankind  and  ask  them  whether  they  would  rather 
have  no  war  any  more,  the  overwhelming  mass  of 
them  would  elect  for  universal  peace.  If  it  were 
war  of  the  modern  mechanical  type  that  was  in 
question,  with  air  raids,  high  explosives,  poison  gas 
and  submarines,  there  could  be  no  doubt  at  all  about 


10  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

the  response.  "  Give  peace  in  our  time,  O  Lord,"  is 
more  than  ever  the  common  prayer  of  Christendom, 
and  the  very  war  makers  claim  to  be  peace  makers ; 
the  German  Emperor  has  never  faltered  in  his  as- 
sertion that  he  encouraged  Austria  to  send  an  im- 
possible ultimatum  to  Serbia,  and  invaded  Belgium 
because  Germany  was  being  attacked.  The  Krupp- 
Kaiser  Empire,  he  assures  us,  is  no  eagle,  but  a 
double-headed  lamb,  resisting  the  shearers  and 
butchers.  The  apologists  for  war  are  in  a  hopeless 
minority;  a  certain  number  of  German  Prussians 
who  think  war  good  for  the  soul,  and  the  dear  ladies 
of  the  London  Morning  Post  who  think  war  so  good 
for  the  manners  of  the  working  classes,  are  rare, 
discordant  voices  in  the  general  chorus  against  war. 
If  a  mere  unsupported  and  unco-ordinated  will  for 
peace  could  realise  itself,  there  would  be  peace,  and 
an  enduring  peace,  to-morrow.  But,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  there  is  no  peace  coming  to-morrow,  and  no 
clear  prospect  yet  of  an  enduring  universal  peace  at 
the  end  of  this  war. 

Now  what  are  the  obstructions,  and  what  are  the 
antagonisms  to  the  exploitation  of  this  worldwide 
disgust  with  war  and  the  worldwide  desire  for  peace, 
so  as  to  establish  a  world  peace?  Let  us  take  them 
in  order,  and  it  will  speedily  become  apparent  that 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  11 

we  are  dealing  here  with  a  subtle  quantitative  prob- 
lem in  psychology,  a  constant  weighing  of  whether 
this  force  or  that  force  is  the  stronger.  We  are 
dealing  with  influences  so  subtle  that  the  accidents 
of  some  striking  dramatic  occurrence,  for  example, 
may  turn  them  this  way  or  that.  We  are  dealing 
with  the  human  will  —  and  thereby  comes  a  snare 
for  the  feet  of  the  would-be  impartial  prophet.  To 
foretell  the  future  is  to  modify  the  future.  It  is 
hard  for  any  prophet  not  to  break  into  exhortation 
after  the  fashion  of  the  prophets  of  Israel. 

The  first  difficulty  in  the  way  of  establishing  a 
world  peace  is  that  it  is  nobody's  business  in  par- 
ticular. Nearly  all  of  us  want  a  world  peace  —  in 
an  amateurish  sort  of  way.  But  there  is  no  specific 
person  or  persons  to  whom  one  can  look  for  the 
initiatives.  The  world  is  a  supersaturated  solu- 
tion of  the  will-for-peace,  and  there  is  nothing  for  it 
to  crystallise  upon.  There  is  no  one  in  all  the  world 
who  is  responsible  for  the  understanding  and  over- 
coming of  the  difficulties  involved.  There  are  many 
more  people,  and  there  is  much  more  intelligence 
concentrated  upon  the  manufacture  of  cigarettes  or 
hairpins  than  there  is  upon  the  establishment  of  a 
permanent  world  peace.  There  are  a  few  special 
secretaries  employed  by  philanthropic  Americans, 


12  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

and  that  is  about  all.  There  has  been  no  provision 
made  even  for  the  emoluments  of  these  gentlemen 
when  universal  peace  is  attained;  presumably  they 
would  lose  their  jobs.  Nearly  everybody  wants 
peace;  nearly  everybody  would  be  glad  to  wave  a 
white  flag  with  a  dove  on  it  now  —  provided  no  un- 
fair use  was  made  of  such  a  demonstration  by  the 
enemy  —  but  there  is  practically  nobody  thinking 
out  the  arrangements  needed,  and  nobody  making 
nearly  as  much  propaganda  for  the  instruction  of 
the  world  in  the  things  needful  as  is  made  in  selling 
any  popular  make  of  automobile.  We  have  all  our 
particular  businesses  to  attend  to.  And  things  are 
not  got  by  just  wanting  them;  things  are  got  by 
getting  them,  and  rejecting  whatever  precludes  our 
getting  them. 

That  is  the  first  great  difficulty:  the  formal 
Peace  Movement  is  quite  amateurish.  It  is  so  ama- 
teurish that  the  bulk  of  people  do  not  even  realise 
the  very  first  implication  of  the  peace  of  the  world. 
It  has  not  succeeded  in  bringing  this  home  to  them. 
If  there  is  to  be  a  permanent  peace  of  the  world,  it 
is  clear  that  there  must  be  some  permanent  means 
of  settling  disputes  between  Powers  and  nations 
that  would  otherwise  be  at  war.  That  means  that 
there  must  be  some  head  power,  some  point  of  refer- 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  13 

ence,  a  supreme  court  of  some  kind,  a  universally 
recognised  executive  over  and  above  the  separate 
Governments  of  the  world  that  exist  to-day.  That 
does  not  mean  that  those  Governments  have  to  dis- 
appear, that  "  nationality  "  has  to  be  given  up,  or 
anything  so  drastic  as  that.  But  it  does  mean  that 
all  those  Governments  have  to  surrender  almost  as 
much  of  their  sovereignty  as  the  constituent  sover- 
eign States  which  make  up  the  United  States  of 
America  have  surrendered  to  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment; if  their  unification  is  to  be  anything  more 
than  a  formality,  they  will  have  to  delegate  a  con- 
trol of  their  inter-State  relations  to  an  extent  for 
which  few  minds  are  prepared  at  present.  It  is 
really  quite  idle  to  dream  of  a  warless  world  in 
which  States  are  still  absolutely  free  to  annoy  one 
another  with  tariffs,  with  the  blocking  and  squeez- 
ing of  trade  routes,  with  the  ill-treatment  of  immi- 
grants and  travelling  strangers,  and  between  which 
there  is  no  means  of  settling  boundary  disputes. 
Moreover,  as  between  the  united  States  of  the  world 
and  the  United  States  of  America  there  is  this 
further  complication  of  the  world  position :  that  al- 
most all  the  great  States  of  Europe  are  in  posses- 
sion, firstly,  of  highly  developed  territories  of  alien 
language  and  race,  such  as  Egypt ;  and,  secondly,  of 


14  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

barbaric  and  less-developed  territories,  such  as 
Nigeria  or  Madagascar.  There  will  be  nothing 
stable  about  a  world  settlement  that  does  not  de- 
stroy in  these  '^  possessions  "  the  national  prefer- 
ence of  the  countries  that  "  own  "  them  and  that 
does  not  prepare  for  the  immediate  or  eventual  ac- 
cession of  these  subject  peoples  to  State  rank.  But 
thousands  of  intelligent  people  in  those  great  Euro- 
pean countries  who  believe  themselves  ardent  for  a 
world  peace  will  be  staggered  at  any  proposal  to 
place  any  part  of  "  our  Empire  '^  under  a  world 
administration  on  the  footing  of  a  United  States 
territory.  Until  they  cease  to  be  staggered  by  any- 
thing of  the  sort,  their  aspirations  for  a  permanent 
peace  will  remain  disconnected  from  the  main  cur- 
rent of  their  lives.  And  that  current  will  flow, 
sluggishly  or  rapidly,  towards  war.  For  essentially 
these  "  possessions  ''  are  like  tariffs,  like  the  strate- 
gic occupation  of  neutral  countries  or  secret  treat- 
ies; they  are  forms  of  the  conflict  between  nations 
to  oust  and  prevail  over  other  nations.  Going  on 
with  such  things  and  yet  deprecating  war  is  really 
not  an  attempt  to  abolish  conflict;  it  is  an  attempt 
to  retain  conflict  and  limit  its  intensity;  it  is  like 
trying  to  play  hockey  on  the  understanding  that  the 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  15 

ball  shall  never  travel  faster  than  eight  miles  an 
hour. 

Now  it  not  only  stands  in  our  way  to  a  permanent 
peace  of  the  world  that  the  great  mass  of  men  are 
not  prepared  for  even  the  most  obvious  implications 
of  such  an  idea,  but  there  is  also  a  second  invincible 
difficulty  —  that  there  is  nowhere  in  the  world  any- 
body, any  type  of  men,  any  organisation,  any  idea, 
any  nucleus  or  germ  that  could  possibly  develop 
into  the  necessary  over-Government.  We  are  ask- 
ing for  something  out  of  the  air,  out  of  nothingness, 
that  will  necessarily  array  against  itself  the  resist- 
ance of  all  those  w  ho  are  in  control,  or  interested 
in  the  control,  of  the  affairs  of  sovereign  States  of 
the  world  as  they  are  at  present ;  the  resistance  of 
a  gigantic  network  of  Government  organisations, 
interests,  privileges,  assumptions.  Against  this  a 
headless,  vague  aspiration,  however  universal,  is 
likely  to  prove  quite  ineffective.  Of  course,  it  is 
possible  to  suggest  that  the  Hague  Tribunal  is  con- 
ceivably the  germ  of  such  an  overriding  direction 
and  supreme  court  as  the  peace  of  the  w^orld  de- 
mands, but  in  reality  the  Hague  Tribunal  is  a  mere 
legal  automatic  machine.  It  does  nothing  unless 
vou  set  it  in  motion.     It  has  no  initiative.     It  does 


16  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

not  even  protest  against  the  most  obvious  outrages 
upon  that  phantom  of  a  world-conscience  —  inter- 
national law. 

Pacificists  in  their  search  for  some  definite  start- 
ing-point, about  which  the  immense  predisposition 
for  peace  may  crystallise,  have  suggested  the  Pope 
and  various  religious  organisations  as  a  possible 
basis  for  the  organisation  of  peace.  But  there 
would  be  no  appeal  from  such  a  beginning  to  the 
non-Christian  majority  of  mankind,  and  the  sug- 
gestion in  itself  indicates  a  profound  ignorance  of 
the  nature  of  the  Christian  churches.  With  the 
exception  of  the  Quakers  and  a  few  Russian  sects, 
no  Christian  sect  or  church  has  ever  repudiated 
war;  most  have  gone  out  of  the  way  to  sanction  it 
and  bless  it.  It  is  altogether  too  rashly  assumed 
by  people  whose  sentimentality  outruns  their  knowl- 
edge that  Christianity  is  essentially  an  attempt  to 
carry  out  the  personal  teachings  of  Christ.  It  is 
nothing  of  the  sort,  and  no  church  authority  will 
support  that  idea.  Christianity  —  more  particu- 
larly after  the  ascendency  of  the  Trinitarian  doc- 
trine was  established  —  was  and  is  a  theological 
religion;  it  is  the  religion  that  triumphed  over 
Arianism,  Manichseism,  Gnosticism,  and  the  like; 
it  is  based  not  on  Christ,  but  on  its  creeds ;  Christ, 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  17 

indeed,  is  not  even  its  symbol ;  on  the  contrary,  the 
chosen  symbol  of  Christianity  is  the  cross  to  which 
Christ  was  nailed  and  on  which  He  died.  It  was 
very  largely  a  religion  of  the  legions.  It  was  the 
warrior  Theodosius  who,  more  than  any  single  other 
man,  imposed  it  upon  Europe.  There  is  no  reason, 
therefore,  either  in  precedent  or  profession,  for  ex- 
pecting any  plain  lead  from  the  churches  in  this 
tremendous  task  of  organising  and  making  effective 
the  widespread  desire  of  the  world  for  peace.  And 
even  were  this  the  case,  it  is  doubtful  if  we  should 
find  in  the  divines  and  dignitaries  of  the  Vatican, 
of  the  Russian  and  British  official  churches,  or  of 
any  other  of  the  multitudinous  Christian  sects,  the 
power  and  energy,  the  knowledge  and  ability,  or 
even  the  goodwill  needed  to  negotiate  so  vast  a  thing 
as  the  creation  of  a  world  authority. 

One  other  possible  starting-point  has  been  sug- 
gested. It  is  no  great  feat  for  a  naive  imagination 
to  suppose  the  President  of  the  Swiss  Confederation 
or  the  President  of  the  United  States  —  for  each  of 
these  two  systems  is  an  exemplary  and  encourag- 
ing instance  of  the  possibility  of  the  pacific  syn- 
thesis of  independent  States  —  taking  a  propa- 
gandist course  and  proposing  extensions  of  their 
own   systems   to   the   suffering   belligerents.     But 


18  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

nothing  of  the  sort  occurs.  And  when  you  come  to 
look  into  the  circumstances  of  these  two  Presidents 
you  will  discover  that  neither  of  them  is  any  more 
free  than  anybody  else  to  embark  upon  the  task  of 
creating  a  State-overriding,  war -preventing  organ- 
isation of  the  world.  He  has  been  created  by  a  sys- 
tem, and  he  is  bound  to  a  system;  his  concern  is 
with  the  interests  of  the  people  of  Switzerland  or  of 
the  United  States  of  America.  President  Wilson, 
for  example,  is  quite  sufficiently  occupied  by  the 
affairs  of  the  White  House,  by  the  clash  of  political 
parties,  by  interferences  with  American  overseas 
trade  and  the  security  of  American  citizens.  He 
has  no  more  time  to  give  to  projects  for  the  funda- 
mental reconstruction  of  international  relationships 
than  has  any  recruit  drilling  in  England,  or  any 
captain  on  an  ocean  liner,  or  any  engineer  in  charge 
of  a  going  engine. 

We  are  all,  indeed,  busy  with  the  things  that  come 
to  hand  every  day.  We  are  all  anxious  for  a  per- 
manent w^orld  peace,  but  we  are  all  up  to  the  neck 
in  things  that  leave  us  no  time  to  attend  to  this 
world  peace  that  nearly  every  sane  man  desires. 
Meanwhile,  a  small  minority  of  people  who  trade 
upon  contention  —  militarists,  ambitious  kings  and 
statesmen,  war  contractors,  loan  mongers,  sensa- 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  19 

tional  journalists  —  follow  up  their  interests  and 
start  and  sustain  war.  There  lies  the  paradox- 
ical reality  of  this  question.  Our  first  inquiry  lands 
us  into  the  elucidation  of  this  deadlock.  Nearly 
everybody  desires  a  world  peace,  and  yet  there  is 
not  apparent  anywhere  any  men  free  and  able  and 
willing  to  establish  it,  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  are  a  considerable  number  of  men  in  positions 
of  especial  influence  and  power  who  will  certainly 
resist  the  arrangements  that  are  essential  to  its 
establishment. 

But  does  this  exhaust  the  question,  and  must  we 
conclude  that  mankind  is  doomed  to  a  perpetual, 
futile  struggling  of  States  and  nations  and  peoples 
—  breaking  ever  and  again  into  war?  The  answer 
to  that  would  probably  be  "  Yes  "  if  it  were  not  for 
the  progress  of  war.  War  is  continually  becoming 
more  scientific,  more  destructive,  more  coldly  logi- 
cal, more  intolerant  of  non-combatants,  and  more 
exhausting  of  every  kind  of  property.  There  is 
every  reason  to  believe  that  it  will  continue  to  in- 
tensify these  characteristics.  By  doing  so  it  may 
presently  bring  about  a  state  of  affairs  that  will 
supply  just  the  lacking  elements  that  are  needed 
for  the  development  of  a  world  peace.  I  would 
venture  to  suggest  that  the  present  war  is  doing  so 


20  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

now :  that  it  is  producing  changes  in  men's  minds 
that  may  presently  give  us  both  the  needed  energy 
and  the  needed  organisation  from  which  a  world 
direction  may  develop. 

The  first,  most  distinctive  thing  about  this  con- 
flict is  the  exceptionally  searching  way  in  which  it 
attacks  human  happiness.  No  war  has  ever  de- 
stroyed happiness  so  widely.  It  has  not  only  killed 
and  wounded  an  unprecedented  proportion  of  the 
male  population  of  all  the  combatant  nations,  but 
it  has  also  destroyed  wealth  beyond  precedent.  It 
has  also  destroyed  freedom  —  of  movement,  of 
speech,  of  economic  enterprise.  Hardly  any  one 
alive  has  escaped  the  worry  of  it  and  the  threat  of 
it.  It  has  left  scarcely  a  life  untouched,  and  made 
scarcely  a  life  happier.  There  is  a  limit  to  the  prin- 
ciple that  "  everybody's  business  is  nobody's  busi- 
ness." The  establishment  of  a  world  State,  which 
was  interesting  only  to  a  few  cranks  and  visionaries 
before  the  war,  is  now  the  lively  interest  of  a  very 
great  number  of  people.  They  inquire  about  it; 
they  have  become  accessible  to  ideas  about  it. 

Peace  organisation  seems,  indeed,  to  be  following 
the  lines  of  public  sanitation.  Everybody  in  Eng- 
land, for  example,  was  bored  by  the  discussion 
of  sanitation  —  until  the  great  cholera  epidemic. 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  21 

Everybody  thought  public  health  a  very  desirable 
thing,  but  nobody  thought  it  intensely  and  overrid- 
ingly  desirable.  Then  the  interest  in  sanitation 
grew  lively,  and  people  exerted  themselves  to  cre- 
ate responsible  organisations.  Crimes  of  violence, 
again,  were  neglected  in  the  great  cities  of  Europe 
until  the  danger  grew  to  dimensions  that  evolved 
the  police.  There  come  occasions  when  the  normal 
concentration  of  an  individual  upon  his  own  im- 
mediate concerns  becomes  impossible;  as,  for  in- 
stance, when  a  man  who  is  stocktaking  in  his  busi- 
ness premises  discovers  that  the  house  next  door  is 
on  fire.  A  great  many  people  w^ho  have  never 
troubled  their  heads  about  anything  but  their  own 
purely  personal  and  selfish  interests  are  now  realis- 
ing that  quite  a  multitude  of  houses  about  them  are 
ablaze,  and  that  the  fire  is  spreading. 

That  is  one  change  the  war  will  bring  about  that 
will  make  for  world  peace :  a  quickened  general  in- 
terest in  its  possibility.  Another  is  the  certainty 
that  the  war  will  increase  the  number  of  devoted 
and  fanatic  characters  available  for  disinterested 
effort.  Whatever  other  outcome  this  war  may  have, 
it  means  that  there  lies  ahead  a  period  of  extreme 
economic  and  political  dislocation.  The  credit  sys- 
tem has  been  strained,  and  will  be  strained,  and 


22  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

will  need  unprecedented  readjustments.  In  the 
past  such  phases  of  uncertainty,  sudden  impoverish- 
ment and  disorder  as  certainly  lie  ahead  of  us  have 
meant  for  a  considerable  number  of  minds  a  release 
—  or,  if  you  prefer  it,  a  flight  —  from  the  habitual 
and  selfish.  Types  of  intense  religiosity,  of  devo- 
tion and  of  endeavour  are  let  loose,  and  there  will 
be  much  more  likelihood  that  we  may  presently  find, 
what  it  is  impossible  to  find  now,  a  number  of  de- 
voted men  and  women  ready  to  give  their  whole 
lives,  with  a  quasi-religious  enthusiasm,  to  this 
great  task  of  peace  establishment,  finding  in  such 
impersonal  work  a  refuge  from  the  disappoint- 
ments, limitations,  losses  and  sorrows  of  their  per- 
sonal life  —  a  refuge  we  need  but  little  in  more  set- 
tled and  more  prosperous  periods.  They  will  be 
but  the  outstanding  individuals  in  a  very  universal 
quickening.  And  simultaneously  with  this  quick- 
ening of  the  general  imagination  by  experience 
there  are  certain  other  developments  in  progress 
that  point  very  clearly  to  a  change  under  the  pres- 
sure of  this  war  of  just  those  institutions  of  nation- 
ality, kingship,  diplomacy  and  inter-State  competi- 
tion that  have  hitherto  stood  most  effectually  in  the 
way  of  a  world  pacification.     The  considerations 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  23 

that  seem  to  point  to  this  third  change  are  very  con- 
vincing, to  my  mind. 

The  real  operating  cause  that  is,  I  believe,  going 
to  break  down  the  deadlock  that  has  hitherto  made 
a  supreme  court  and  a  federal  government  for  the 
world  at  large  a  dream,  lies  in  just  that  possibility 
of  an  "  inconclusive  peace  "  which  so  many  people 
seem  to  dread.  Germany,  I  believe,  is  going  to  be 
beaten,  but  not  completely  crushed,  by  this  war; 
she  is  going  to  be  left  militarist  and  united  with 
Austria  and  Hungary,  and  unchanged  in  her  essen- 
tial nature ;  and  out  of  that  state  of  affairs  comes,  I 
believe,  the  hope  for  an  ultimate  confederation  of 
the  nations  of  the  earth. 

Because,  in  the  face  of  a  league  of  the  Central 
European  Powers  attempting  recuperation,  cherish- 
ing revenge,  dreaming  of  a  renewal  of  the  struggle, 
it  becomes  impossible  for  the  British,  the  French, 
the  Belgians,  Russians,  Italians  or  Japanese  to 
think  any  longer  of  settling  their  differences  by  war 
among  themselves.  To  do  so  will  mean  the  creation 
of  opportunity  for  the  complete  reinstatement  of 
German  militarism.  It  will  open  the  door  for 
a  conclusive  German  hegemony.  Now,  however 
clumsy  and  confused  the  diplomacy  of  these  present 


24  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

Allies  may  be  (challenged  constantly,  as  it  is,  by 
democracy  and  hampered  by  a  free,  venal  and  irre- 
sponsible Press  in  at  least  three  of  their  countries), 
the  necessity  they  will  be  under  will  be  so  urgent 
and  so  evident  that  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  that 
they  will  not  set  up  some  permanent  organ  for  the 
direction  and  co-ordination  of  their  joint  interna- 
tional relationships.  It  may  be  a  queerly  consti- 
tuted body  at  first ;  it  may  be  of  a  merely  diplomatic 
pretension ;  it  may  be  called  a  Congress,  or  any  old 
name  of  that  sort,  but  essentially  its  business  will 
be  to  conduct  a  joint,  fiscal,  military  and  naval 
policy,  to  keep  the  peace  in  the  Balkans  and  Asia, 
to  establish  a  relationship  with  China,  and  organise 
joint  and  several  arbitration  arrangements  with 
America.  And  it  must  develop  something  more 
sure  and  swift  than  our  present  diplomacy.  One 
of  its  chief  concerns  will  be  the  right  of  way  through 
the  Bosphorus  and  the  Dardanelles,  and  the  watch- 
ing of  the  forces  that  stir  up  conflict  in  the  Balkans 
and  the  Levant.  It  must  have  unity  enough  for 
that;  it  must  be  much  more  than  a  mere  leisurely, 
unauthoritative  conference  of  representatives. 

For  precisely  similar  reasons  it  seems  to  me  in- 
credible that  the  two  great  Central  European 
Powers  should  ever  fall  into  sustained  conflict  again 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  25 

with  one  another.  They,  too,  will  be  forced  to 
create  some  overriding  body  to  prevent  so  suicidal 
a  possibility.  America  too,  it  may  be,  will  develop 
some  Pan-American  equivalent.  Probably  the  hun- 
dred millions  of  Latin  America  may  achieve  a 
method  of  unity,  and  then  deal  on  equal  terms  with 
the  present  United  States.  The  thing  has  been  ably 
advocated  already  in  South  America.  Whatever 
appearances  of  separate  sovereignties  are  kept  up 
after  the  war,  the  practical  outcome  of  the  struggle 
is  quite  likely  to  be  this:  that  there  will  be  only 
three  great  World  Powers  left  —  the  anti-German 
allies,  the  allied  Central  Europeans,  the  Pan- 
Americans.  And  it  is  to  be  noted  that,  whatever 
the  constituents  of  these  three  Powers  may  be,  none 
of  them  is  likely  to  be  a  monarchy.  They  may  in- 
clude monarchies,  as  England  includes  dukedoms. 
But  they  will  be  overriding  alliances,  not  overriding 
rulers.  I  leave  it  to  the  mathematician  to  work 
out  exactly  how  much  the  chances  of  conflict  are 
diminished  when  there  are  practically  only  three 
Powers  in  the  world  instead  of  some  scores.  And 
these  new  Powers  will  be  in  certain  respects  unlike 
any  existing  European  "  States."  None  of  the  three 
Powers  will  be  small  or  homogeneous  enough  to 
serve  dynastic  ambitions,  embody  a  national  or 


26  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

racial  Kultur,  or  fall  into  the  grip  of  any  group  of 
financial  enterprises.  They  will  be  more  compre- 
hensive, less  romantic,  and  more  businesslike  alto- 
gether. They  will  be,  to  use  a  phrase  suggested  a 
year  or  so  ago,  Great  States.  .  .  .  And  the  war 
threat  between  the  three  will  be  so  plain  and  defin- 
ite, the  issues  will  be  so  lifted  out  of  the  spheres  of 
merely  personal  ambition  and  national  feeling,  that 
I  do  not  see  why  the  negotiating  means,  the  stand- 
ing conference  of  the  three,  should  not  ultimately 
become  the  needed  nucleus  of  the  World  State  for 
which  at  present  we  search  the  world  in  vain. 

There  are  more  ways  than  one  to  the  World  State, 
and  this  second  possibility  of  a  post-war  conference 
and  a  conference  of  the  Allies,  growing  almost  una- 
wares into  a  pacific  organisation  of  the  world,  since 
it  goes  on  directly  from  existing  institutions,  since 
it  has  none  of  the  quality  of  a  clean  break  with  the 
past  which  the  idea  of  an  immediate  World  State 
and  Pax  Mundi  involves,  and  more  particularly 
since  it  neither  abolishes  nor  has  in  it  anything  to 
shock  fundamentally  the  princes,  the  diplomatists, 
the  lawyers,  the  statesmen  and  politicians,  the  na- 
tionalists and  suspicious  people,  since  it  gives  them 
years  in  which  to  change  and  die  out  and  reappear 
in  new  forms,  and  since  at  the  same  time  it  will 


FORECASTING  THE  FUTURE  27 

command  the  support  of  every  intelligent  human 
being  who  gets  his  mind  clear  enough  from  his  cir- 
cumstances to  understand  its  import,  is  a  far  more 
credible  hope  than  the  hope  of  anything  coming  de 
novo  out  of  Hague  Foundations  or  the  manifest 
logic  of  the  war. 

But,  of  course,  there  weighs  against  these  hopes 
the  possibility  that  the  Allied  Powers  are  too  vari- 
ous in  their  nature,  too  biased,  too  feeble  intellect- 
ually and  imaginatively,  to  hold  together  and  main- 
tain any  institution  for  co-operation.  The  British 
Press  may  be  too  silly  not  to  foster  irritation  and 
suspicion ;  we  may  get  Carsonism  on  a  larger  scale 
trading  on  the  resuscitation  of  dying  hatreds;  the 
British  and  Russian  diplomatists  may  play  annoy- 
ing tricks  upon  one  another  by  sheer  force  of  habit. 
There  may  be  many  troubles  of  that  sort.  Even 
then  I  do  not  see  that  the  hope  of  an  ultimate  world 
peace  vanishes.  But  it  will  be  a  Roman  world 
peace,  made  in  Germany,  and  there  will  have  to  be 
several  more  great  wars  before  it  is  established. 
Germany  is  too  homogeneous  yet  to  have  begun  the 
lesson  of  compromise  and  the  renunciation  of  the 
dream  of  national  conquest.  The  Germans  are  a 
national  not  an  imperial  people.  France  has  learnt 
that  through  suffering,  and  Britain  and  Russia  be- 


28  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

cause  for  two  centuries  they  have  been  imperial  and 
not  national  systems.  The  German  conception  of 
world  peace  is  as  yet  a  conception  of  German  ascend- 
ency. The  Allied  conception  becomes  perforce  one 
of  mutual  toleration. 

But  I  will  not  press  this  inquiry  farther  now. 

It  is,  as  I  said  at  the  beginning,  a  preliminary  ex- 
ploration of  one  of  the  great  questions  with  which 
I  propose  to  play  in  these  articles.  The  possibility 
I  have  sketched  is  the  one  that  most  commends  it- 
self to  me  as  probable.  After  a  more  detailed  ex- 
amination of  the  big  operating  forces  at  present 
working  in  the  world,  we  may  be  in  a  position  to 
revise  these  suggestions  with  a  greater  confidence 
and  draw  our  net  of  probabilities  a  little  tighter. 


II 

THE  END  OF  THE  WAR  * 

The  prophet  who  emerges  with  the  most  honour 
from  this  war  is  Bloch.  It  must  be  fifteen  or  six- 
teen years  ago  since  this  gifted  Pole  made  his  fore- 
cast of  the  future.  Perhaps  it  is  more,  for  the 
French  translation  of  his  book  was  certainly  in 
existence  before  the  Boer  War.  His  case  was  that 
war  between  antagonists  of  fairly  equal  equipment 
must  end  in  a  deadlock  because  of  the  continually 
increasing  defensive  efficiency  of  entrenched  infan- 
try. This  would  give  the  defensive  an  advantage 
over  the  most  brilliant  strategy  and  over  consider- 
ably superior  numbers  that  would  completely  dis- 
courage all  aggression.  He  concluded  that  war  was 
played  out. 

His  book  was  very  carefully  studied  in  Germany. 
As  a  humble  disciple  of  Bloch  I  should  have  realised 

*  This  chapter  was  originally  a  newspaper  article.  It  was 
written  in  December,  1915,  and  published  about  the  middle  of 
January.  Some  of  it  has  passed  from  the  quality  of  anticipa- 
tion to  achievement,  but  I  do  not  see  that  it  needs  any  material 
revision  on  that  account. 

29 


30  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

this,  but  I  did  not,  and  that  failure  led  me  into  some 
unfortunate  prophesying  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 
I  judged  Germany  by  the  Kaiser,  and  by  the  Kaiser- 
worship  which  I  saw  in  Berlin.  I  thought  that  he 
was  a  theatrical  person  who  would  dream  of  vast 
massed  attacks  and  tremendous  cavalry  charges, 
and  that  he  would  lead  Germany  to  be  smashed 
against  the  Allied  defensive  in  the  West,  and  to  be 
smashed  so  thoroughly  that  the  war  would  be  over. 
I  did  not  properly  appreciate  the  more  studious  and 
more  thorough  Germany  that  was  to  fight  behind  the 
Kaiser  and  thrust  him  aside,  the  Germany  we  Brit- 
ish fight  now,  the  Ostwald-Krupp  Germany  of  1915. 
That  Germany,  one  may  now  perceive,  had  read  and 
thought  over  and  thought  out  the  Bloch  problem. 
There  was  also  a  translation  of  Bloch  into  French. 
In  English  a  portion  of  his  book  was  translated  for 
the  general  reader  and  published  with  a  preface  by 
the  late  Mr.  W.  T.  Stead.  It  does  not  seem  to  have 
reached  the  British  military  authorities,  nor  was  it 
published  in  England  with  an  instructive  intention. 
As  an  imaginative  work  it  would  have  been  con- 
sidered worthless  and  impracticable. 

But  it  is  manifest  now  that  if  the  Belgian  and 
French  frontiers  had  been  properly  prepared  —  as 
they  should  have  been  prepared  when  the  Germans 


THE  END  OF  THE  WAB  31 

built  their  strategic  railways  —  with  trenches  and 
gun  emplacements  and  secondary  and  tertiary  lines, 
the  Germans  would  never  have  got  fifty  miles  into 
either  France  or  Belgium.     They  would  have  been 
held  at  Liege  and  in  the  Ardennes.     Five  hundred 
thousand  men  would  have  held  them  indefinitely. 
But  the  Allies  had  never  worked  out  trench  w^ar- 
fare;  they  were  unready  for  it,  the  Germans  knew 
of  their  unreadiness,  and  upon  their  unreadiness  it 
is  quite  clear  they  calculated.     They  did  not  reckon, 
it  is  now^  clear  that  they  w^ere  right  in  not  reckoning, 
the  Allies  as  contemporary  soldiers.     They  were  go- 
ing to  fight  a  1900  army  with  a  1914  army,  and  their 
whole  opening  scheme  was  based  on  the  conviction 
that  the  Allies  would  not  entrench.     Somebody  in 
those  marvellous  maxims  from  the  dark  ages  that 
seem  to  form  the  chief  reading  of  our  military  ex- 
perts, said  that  the  army  that  entrenches  is  a  de- 
feated army.     The  silly  dictum  was  repeated  and  re- 
peated in  the  English  papers  after  the  battle  of  the 
Marne.     It  shows  just  where  our  military  science 
had  reached  in  1914,  namely,  to  a  level  a  year  before 
Bloch  wrote.     So  the  Allies  retreated.     For  long 
weeks  the  Allies  retreated  out  of  the  w^est  of  Bel- 
gium, out  of  the  north  of  France,  and  for  rather  over 
a  month  there  was  a  loose  mobile  war  —  as  if  Bloch 


32  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

had  never  existed.  The  Germans  were  not  fighting 
the  1914  pattern  of  war,  they  were  fighting  the  1899 
pattern  of  war,  in  which  direct  attack,  outflanking 
and  so  on  were  still  supposed  to  be  possible;  they 
were  fighting  confident  in  their  overwhelming  num- 
bers, in  their  prepared  surprise,  in  the  unthought- 
out  methods  of  their  opponents.  In  the  "  Victor- 
ian '^  war  that  ended  in  the  middle  of  September, 
1914,  they  delivered  their  blow,  they  overreached, 
they  were  successfully  counter-attacked  on  the 
Marne,  and  then  abruptly  —  almost  unfairly  it 
seemed  to  the  British  sportsmanlike  conceptions  — 
they  shifted  to  the  game  played  according  to  the 
very  latest  rules  of  1914.  The  war  did  not  come  up 
to  date  until  the  battle  of  the  Aisne.  With  that 
the  second  act  of  the  great  drama  began. 

I  do  not  believe  that  the  Germans  ever  thought  it 
would  come  up  to  date  so  soon.  I  believe  they 
thought  that  they  would  hustle  the  French  out  of 
Paris,  come  right  up  to  the  Channel  at  Calais  before 
the  end  of  1914,  and  then  entrench,  produce  the  sub- 
marine attack  and  the  Zeppelins  against  England, 
working  from  Calais  as  a  base,  and  that  they  would 
end  the  war  before  the  spring  of  1915  —  with  the 
Allies  still  a  good  fifteen  years  behindhand.  I  be- 
lieve the  battle  of  the  Marne  was  the  decisive  battle 


THE  END  OF  THE  WAR  33 

of  the  war,  in  that  it  shattered  this  plan,  and  that 
the  rest  of  the  1914  fighting  was  Germany's  attempt 
to  reconstruct  their  broken  scheme  in  the  face  of  an 
enemy  who  was  continually  getting  more  and  more 
nearly  up  to  date  with  the  fighting.  By  December, 
Bloch,  who  had  seemed  utterly  discredited  in 
August,  was  justified  up  to  the  hilt.  The  world 
was  entrenched  at  his  feet.  By  May  the  lagging 
military  science  of  the  British  had  so  far  overtaken 
events  as  to  realise  that  shrapnel  was  no  longer  so 
important  as  high  explosive,  and  within  a  year  the 
significance  of  machine  guns,  a  significance  thor- 
oughly ventilated  by  imaginative  writers  fifteen 
years  before,  was  being  grasped  by  the  conservative 
but  by  no  means  inadaptable  leaders  of  Britain. 

The  war  since  that  first  attempt  —  admirably 
planned  and  altogether  justifiable  (from  a  military 
point  of  view,  I  mean )  —  of  Germany  to  "  rush  ''  a 
victory,  has  consisted  almost  entirely  of  failures  on 
both  sides  either  to  get  round  or  through  or  over  the 
situation  foretold  by  Bloch.  There  has  been  only 
one  marked  success,  the  German  success  in  Poland 
due  to  the  failure  of  the  Russian  munitions.  Then 
for  a  time  the  war  in  the  East  was  mobile  and  pre- 
carious while  the  Russians  retreated  to  their  present 
positions,  and  the  Germans  pursued  and  tried  to 


34  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

surround  them.  That  was  a  lapse  into  the  pre- 
Bloch  style.  Now  the  Kussians  are  again  en- 
trenched, their  supplies  are  restored,  the  Germans 
have  a  lengthened  line  of  supplies,  and  Bloch  is 
back  upon  his  pedestal  so  far  as  the  eastern  theatre 
goes.  Bloch  has  been  equally  justified  in  the  Anglo- 
French  attempt  to  get  round  through  Gallipoli. 
The  forces  of  the  India  Office  have  pushed  their  way 
through  unprepared  country  towards  Bagdad,  and 
are  now  entrenching  in  Mesopotamia,  but  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  main  war  that  is  too  remote  to 
be  considered  either  getting  through  or  getting 
round ;  and  so  too  the  losses  of  the  German  colonies 
and  the  East  African  War  are  scarcely  to  be 
reckoned  with  in  the  main  war.  They  have  no  de- 
termining value.  There  remains  the  Balkan  strug- 
gle. But  the  Balkan  struggle  is  something  else; 
it  is  something  new.  It  must  be  treated  separately. 
It  is  a  war  of  treacheries  and  brags  and  appear- 
ances. It  is  not  a  part  of,  it  is  a  sequence  to,  the 
deadlock  war  of  1915. 

But  before  dealing  with  this  new  development  of 
the  latter  half  of  1915  it  is  necessary  to  consider 
certain  general  aspects  of  the  deadlock  war.  It  is 
manifest  that  the  Germans  hoped  to  secure  an  ef- 
fective victory  in  this  war  before  they  ran  up  against 


THE  END  OF  THE  WAR  35 

Bloch.  But  reckoning  with  Bloch,  as  they  certainly 
did,  they  hoped  that  even  in  the  event  of  the  war  get- 
ting to  earth  it  would  still  be  possible  to  produce 
novelties  that  would  sufficiently  neutralise  Bloch 
to  secure  a  victorious  peace.  With  unexpectedly 
powerful  artillery  suddenly  concentrated,  with  high 
explosives,  wdth  asphyxiating  gas,  with  a  well-or- 
ganised system  of  grenade  throwing  and  mining, 
with  attacks  of  flaming  gas,  and  above  all  with  a 
vast  munition-making  plant  to  keep  them  going, 
they  had  a  very  reasonable  chance  of  hacking  their 
way  through.  Against  these  prepared  novelties  the 
Allies  have  had  to  improvise,  and  on  the  whole  the 
improvisation  has  kept  pace  with  the  demands  made 
upon  it.  They  have  brought  their  military  science 
up-to-date,  and  to-day  the  disparity  in  science  and 
equipment  between  the  antagonists  has  greatly  di- 
minished. There  has  been  no  escaping  Bloch  after 
all,  and  the  deadlock,  if  no  sudden  peace  occurs,  can 
end  now  in  only  one  thing,  the  exhaustion  in  various 
degrees  of  all  the  combatants  and  the  succumbing 
of  the  most  exhausted.  The  idea  of  a  conclusive 
end  of  the  traditional  pattern  to  this  war,  of  a 
triumphal  entry  into  London,  Paris,  Berlin  or  Mos- 
cow, is  to  be  dismissed  altogether  from  our  calcula- 
tions.    The  end  of  this  war  will  be  a  matter  of  nego- 


36  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

tiation   between   practically   immobilised   and   ex- 
tremely shattered  antagonists. 

There  is,  of  course,  one  aspect  of  the  Bloch  dead- 
lock that  the  Germans  at  least  have  contemplated. 
If  it  is  not  possible  to  get  through  or  round,  it  may 
still  be  possible  to  get  over.  There  is  the  air  path. 
This  idea  has  certainly  taken  hold  of  the  French 
mind,  but  France  has  been  too  busy  and  is  tempera- 
mentally too  economical  to  risk  large  expenditures 
upon  what  is  necessarily  an  experiment.  The 
British  are  too  conservative  and  sceptical  to  be  the 
pioneers  in  any  such  enterprise.  The  Kussians 
have  been  too  poor  in  the  necessary  resources  of 
mechanics  and  material.  The  Germans  alone  have 
made  any  sustained  attempt  to  strike  through  the 
air  at  their  enemies  beyond  the  war  zone.  Their 
Zeppelin  raids  upon  England  have  shown  a  steadily 
increasing  efficiency,  and  it  is  highly  probable  that 
they  will  be  repeated  on  a  much  larger  scale  before 
the  war  is  over.  Quite  possibly,  too,  the  Germans 
are  developing  an  accessory  force  of  large  aero- 
planes to  co-operate  in  such  an  attack.  The  long 
coasts  of  Britain,  the  impossibility  of  their  being 
fully  equipped  throughout  their  extent,  except  at  a 
prohibitive  cost  of  men  and  material,  to  resist  air 
invaders,  exposes  the  whole  length  of  the  island  to 


THE  END  OF  THE  WAR  37 

considerable  risk  and  annoyance  from  such  an  expe- 
dition. It  is  doubtful,  though,  if  the  utmost  dam- 
age an  air  raid  is  likely  to  inflict  upon  England 
would  count  materially  in  the  exhaustion  process, 
and  the  moral  effect  of  these  raids  has  been,  and  will 
be,  to  stiffen  the  British  resolution  to  fight  this  war 
through  to  the  conclusive  ending  of  any  such  possi- 
bilities. The  net  result  of  these  air  raids  is  an  in- 
flexible determination  of  the  British  people  rather 
to  die  in  death  grips  with  German  militarism  than 
to  live  and  let  it  survive.  The  best  chance  for  the 
aircraft  was  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  when  a 
surprise  development  might  have  had  astounding  re- 
sults. That  chance  has  gone  by.  The  Germans  are 
racially  inferior  to  both  French  and  English  in  the 
air,  and  the  probability  of  effective  blows  over  the 
deadlock  is  on  the  whole  a  probability  in  favour 
of  the  Allies.  Nor  is  there  anything  on  or  under  the 
sea  that  seems  likely  now  to  produce  decisive  re- 
sults. We  return  from  these  considerations  to  a 
strengthened  acceptance  of  Bloch. 

The  essential  question  for  the  prophet  remains 
therefore  the  question  of  which  group  of  powers  will 
exhaust  itself  most  rapidly.  And  following  on 
from  that  comes  the  question  of  how  the  successive 
stages  of  exhaustion  will  manifest  themselves  in  the 


38  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

combatant  nations.  The  problems  of  this  war,  as 
of  all  war,  end  as  they  begin  in  national  psychology. 

But  it  will  be  urged  that  this  is  reckoning  without 
the  Balkans.  I  submit  that  the  German  thrust 
through  the  wooded  wilderness  of  Serbia  is  really 
no  part  of  the  war  that  has  ended  in  the  deadlock  of 
1915.  It  is  dramatic,  tragic,  spectacular,  but  it  is 
quite  inconclusive.  Here  there  is  no  way  round  or 
through  to  any  vital  centre  of  Germany's  antago- 
nists. It  turns  nothing ;  it  opens  no  path  to  Paris, 
London,  or  Petrograd.  It  is  a  long,  long  way  from 
the  Danube  to  either  Egypt  or  Mesopotamia,  and 
there  and  there  —  Bloch  is  waiting.  I  do  not  think 
the  Germans  have  any  intention  of  so  generous  an 
extension  of  their  responsibilities.  The  Balkan 
complication  is  no  solution  of  the  deadlock  problem. 
It  is  the  opening  of  the  sequel. 

A  whole  series  of  new  problems  are  opened  up 
directly  we  turn  to  this  most  troubled  region  of  the 
Balkans  —  problems  of  the  value  of  kingship,  of 
nationality,  of  the  destiny  of  such  cities  as  Constan- 
tinople, which  from  their  very  beginning  have  never 
had  any  sort  of  nationality  at  all,  of  the  destiny  of 
countries  such  as  Albania,  where  a  tangle  of  intense 
tribal  nationalities  is  distributed  in  spots  and 
patches,  or  Dalmatia,  where  one  extremely  self -con- 


THE  END  OF  THE  WAR  39 

scious  nation  and  language  is  present  in  the  towns 
and  another  in  the  surrounding  country,  or  Asia 
Minor,  where  no  definite  national  boundaries,  no 
religious,  linguistic,  or  social  homogeneities  have 
ever  established  themselves  since  the  Roman  legions 
beat  them  down.  But  all  these  questions  can  really 
be  deferred  or  set  aside  in  our  present  discussion, 
which  is  a  discussion  of  the  main  war.  Whatever 
surprises  or  changes  this  last  phase  of  the  Eastern 
Empire,  that  blood-clotted  melodrama,  may  involve, 
they  will  but  assist  and  hasten  on  the  essential  con- 
clusion of  the  great  war,  that  the  Central  Powers 
and  their  pledged  antagonists  are  in  a  deadlock,  un- 
able to  reach  a  decision,  and  steadily,  day  by  day, 
hour  by  hour,  losing  men,  destroying  material,  spend- 
ing credit,  approaching  something  unprecedented, 
unknown,  that  we  try  to  express  to  ourselves  by 
the  word  exhaustion.  Just  how  the  people  who  use 
the  word  "  exhaustion  ''  so  freely  are  prepared  to  de- 
fine it,  is  a  matter  for  speculation.  The  idea  seems 
to  be  a  phase  in  which  the  production  of  equipped 
forces  ceases  through  the  using  up  of  men  or  ma- 
terial or  both.  If  the  exhaustion  is  fairly  mutual, 
it  need  not  be  decisive  for  a  long  time.  It  may 
mean  simply  an  ebb  of  vigour  on  both  sides,  un- 
usual hardship,  a  general  social  and  economic  dis- 


40  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

organisation  and  grading  down.  The  fact  that  a 
great  killing  off  of  men  is  implicit  in  the  process, 
and  that  the  survivors  will  be  largely  under  dis- 
cipline, militates  against  the  idea  that  the  end  may 
come  suddenly  through  a  vigorous  revolutionary 
outbreak.  Exhaustion  is  likely  to  be  a  very  long 
and  very  thorough  process,  extending  over  years. 
A  "  war  of  attrition  "  may  last  into  1918  or  1919, 
and  may  bring  us  to  conditions  of  strain  and  de- 
privation still  only  very  vaguely  imagined.  What 
happens  in  the  Turkish  Empire  or  India  or  America 
or  elsewhere  may  extend  the  areas  of  waste  and  ac- 
celerate or  retard  the  process,  but  is  quite  unlikely 
to  end  it. 

Let  us  ask  now  w^hich  of  the  combatants  is  likely 
to  undergo  exhaustion  most  rapidly,  and  what  is 
of  equal  or  greater  importance,  w^hich  is  likely  to 
feel  it  first  and  most?  No  doubt  there  is  a  bias  in 
my  mind,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  odds  are  on  the 
whole  heavily  against  the  Central  Powers.  Their 
peculiar  German  virtue,  their  tremendously  com- 
plete organisation,  which  enabled  them  to  put  so 
large  a  proportion  of  their  total  resources  into  their 
first  onslaught  and  to  make  so  great  and  rapid  a  re- 
covery in  the  spring  of  1915,  leaves  them  with  less 
to  draw  upon  now.     Out  of  a  smaller  fortune  they 


THE  END  OF  THE  WAR  41 

have  spent  a  larger  sum.  They  are  blockaded  to  a 
very  considerable  extent,  and  against  them  fight  not 
merely  the  resources  of  the  Allies,  but,  thanks  to  the 
complete  British  victory  in  the  sea  struggle,  the 
purchasable  resources  of  all  the  world.  Conceiv- 
ably the  Central  Powers  will  draw  upon  the  re- 
sources of  their  Balkan  and  Asiatic  allies,  but  the 
extent  to  which  they  can  do  that  may  very  easily  be 
over-estimated.  There  is  a  limit  to  the  power  for 
treason  of  these  supposititious  German  monarchs 
that  Western  folly  has  permitted  to  possess  these 
Balkan  thrones  —  thrones  which  need  never  have 
been  thrones  at  all  —  and  none  of  the  Balkan  peo- 
ples is  likely  to  witness  with  enthusiasm  the  com- 
plete looting  of  its  country  in  the  German  interest 
by  a  German  court.  Germany  will  have  to  pay  on 
the  nail  for  most  of  her  Balkan  help.  She  will  have 
to  put  more  into  the  Balkans  than  she  takes  out. 
Compared  with  the  world  behind  the  Allies  the 
Turkish  Empire  is  a  country  of  mountains,  desert 
and  undeveloped  lands.  To  develop  these  regions 
into  a  source  of  supplies  under  the  strains  and 
shortages  of  wartime,  will  be  an  immense  and  dan- 
gerous undertaking  for  Germany.  She  may  open 
mines  she  may  never  work,  build  railways  that 
others  will  enjoy,  sow  harvests  for  alien  reaping. 


42  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

The  people  the  Bulgarians  want  in  Bulgaria  are  not 
Germans  but  Bulgarians ;  the  people  the  Turks  want 
in  Anatolia  are  not  Germans  but  Turks.  And  for 
all  these  tasks  Germany  must  send  men.     Men  ? 

At  present,  so  far  as  any  judgment  is  possible, 
Germany  is  feeling  the  pinch  of  the  war  much  more 
even  than  France,  which  is  habitually  parsimonious, 
and  instinctively  cleverly  economical,  and  Kussia, 
which  is  hardy  and  insensitive.  Great  Britain  has 
really  only  begun  to  feel  the  stress.  She  has  prob- 
ably suffered  economically  no  more  than  have  Hol- 
land or  Switzerland,  and  Italy  and  Japan  have  cer- 
tainly suffered  less.  All  these  three  great  countries 
are  still  full  of  men,  of  gear,  of  saleable  futures.  In 
every  part  of  the  globe  Great  Britain  has  colossal 
investments.  She  has  still  to  apply  the  great  prin- 
ciple of  conscription  not  only  to  her  sons  but  to  the 
property  of  her  overseas  investors  and  of  her  landed 
proprietors.  She  has  not  even  looked  yet  at  the 
German  financial  expedients  of  a  year  ago.  She 
moves  reluctantly,  but  surely,  towards  such  a 
thoroughness  of  mobilisation.  There  need  be  no 
doubt  that  she  will  completely  socialise  herself, 
completely  reorganise  her  whole  social  and  econo- 
mic structure  sooner  than  lose  this  war.  She  will 
do  it  clumsily  and  ungracefully,  with  much  internal 


THE  END  OF  THE  WAR  43 

bickering,  with  much  trickery  on  the  part  of  her 
lawyers  and  much  baseness  on  the  part  of  her 
landlords;  but  she  will  do  it  not  so  slowly  as  a 
logical  mind  might  anticipate.  She  will  get  there 
a  little  late,  expensively,  but  still  in  time.  .  .  . 

The  German  grouj),  I  reckon,  therefore,  will  be- 
come exhausted  first.  I  think,  too,  that  Germany 
will,  as  a  nation,  feel,  and  be  aware  of  what  is  hap- 
pening to  her  sooner  than  any  other  of  the  nations 
that  are  sharing  in  this  process  of  depletion.  In 
1914  the  Germans  were  reaping  the  harvest  of  forty 
years  of  economic  development  and  business  enter- 
prise. Property  and  plenty  were  new  experiences, 
and  a  generation  had  grown  up  in  whose  world  a 
sense  of  expansion  and  progress  was  normal.  There 
existed  amongst  it  no  tradition  of  the  great  hard- 
ship of  war,  such  as  the  French  possessed,  to  steel 
its  mind.  It  had  none  of  the  irrational  mute  tough- 
ness of  the  Russians  and  British.  It  was  a  senti- 
mental people,  making  a  habit  of  success ;  it  rushed 
chanting  to  war  against  the  most  grimly  heroic  and 
the  most  stolidly  enduring  of  races.  Germany  came 
into  this  war  more  buoyantly  and  confidently  than 
any  other  combatant.  It  expected  another  1871; 
at  the  utmost  it  anticipated  a  year  of  war.  Never 
were  a  people  so  disillusioned  as  the  Germans  must 


44  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

already  be,  never  has  a  nation  been  called  upon  for 
so  complete  a  mental  readjustment.  Neither  con- 
clusive victories  nor  defeats  have  been  theirs,  but 
only  a  slow,  vast  transition  from  joyful  effort  and 
an  illusion  of  rapid  triumph  to  hardship,  loss  and 
loss  and  loss  of  substance,  the  dwindling  of  great 
hopes,  the  realisation  of  ebb  in  the  tide  of  national 
welfare.  Now  they  must  fight  on  against  im- 
placable, indomitable  Allies.  They  are  under 
stresses  now  as  harsh  at  least  as  the  stresses  of 
France.  And,  compared  with  the  French,  the  Ger- 
mans are  uutempered  steel.  We  know  little  of  the 
psychology  of  this  new  Germany  that  has  come  into 
being  since  1871,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  it  will  accept 
defeat,  and  still  more  doubtful  how  it  can  evade 
some  ending  to  the  war  that  will  admit  the  failure 
of  all  its  great  hopes  of  Paris  subjugated,  London 
humbled,  Kussia  suppliant,  Belgium  conquered,  the 
Near  East  a  prey.  Such  an  admission  will  be  a  day 
of  reckoning  that  German  Imperialism  will  post- 
pone until  the  last  hope  of  some  breach  among  the 
Allies,  some  saving  miracle  in  the  old  Eastern  Em- 
pire, some  dramatically-snatched  victory  at  the 
eleventh  hour,  is  gone.  Nor  can  the  Pledged  Allies 
consent  to  a  peace  that  does  not  involve  the  evacua- 
tion and  compensation  of  Belgium  and  Serbia,  and 


THE  END  OF  THE  WAR  45 

at  least  the  autonomy  of  the  lost  Rhine  provinces 
of  France.  That  is  their  very  minimum.  That, 
and  the  making  of  Germany  so  sick  and  weary  of 
military  adventure  that  the  danger  of  German  ambi- 
tion will  cease  to  overshadow  European  life.  Those 
are  the  ends  of  the  main  w^ar.  Europe  will  go  down 
through  stage  after  stage  of  impoverishment  and 
exhaustion  until  these  ends  are  attained,  or  made 
forever  impossible. 

But  these  things  form  only  the  main  outline  of  a 
story  with  a  vast  amount  of  collateral  interest.  It 
is  to  these  collateral  issues  that  the  amateur  in 
prophecy  must  give  his  attention.  It  is  here  that 
the  German  will  be  induced  by  his  government  to 
see  his  compensations.  He  will  be  consoled  for  the 
restoration  of  Serbia  by  the  prospect  of  future  con- 
flicts between  Italian  and  Jugoslav  that  will  let  him 
in  again  to  the  Adriatic.  His  attention  will  be 
directed  to  his  newer,  closer  association  with  Bul- 
garia and  Turkey.  In  those  countries  he  will  be 
told  he  may  yet  repeat  the  miracle  of  Hungary. 
And  there  may  be  also  another  Hungary  in  Poland. 
It  will  be  whispered  to  him  that  he  has  really  con- 
quered those  countries  when  indeed  it  is  highly 
probable  he  has  only  spent  his  substance  in  setting 
up  new  assertive  alien  allies.     The  Kaiser,  if  he  is 


46  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

not  too  afraid  of  the  precedent  of  Sarajevo,  may 
make  a  great  entry  into  Constantinople,  with  an 
effect  of  conquering  what  is  after  all  only  a  tempo- 
rarily allied  capital.  The  German  will  hope  also 
to  retain  his  fleet,  and  no  peace,  he  will  be  reminded, 
can  rob  him  of  his  hard-earned  technical  superiority 
in  the  air.  The  German  air  fleet  of  1930  may  yet  be 
something  as  predominant  as  the  British  Navy  of 
1915,  and  capable  of  delivering  a  much  more  in- 
timate blow.  Had  he  not  better  wait  for  that? 
When  such  consolations  as  these  become  popular  in 
the  German  Press  we  of  the  Pledged  Allies  may  be- 
gin to  talk  of  peace,  for  these  will  be  its  necessary 
heralds. 

The  concluding  phase  of  a  process  of  general  ex- 
haustion must  almost  inevitably  be  a  game  of  bluff. 
Neither  side  will  admit  its  extremity.  Neither 
side,  therefore,  will  make  any  direct  proposals  to 
its  antagonists  nor  any  open  advances  to  a  neutral. 
But  there  will  be  much  inspired  peace  talk  through 
neutral  media,  and  the  consultations  of  the  anti- 
German  allies  will  become  more  intimate  and  de- 
tailed. Suggestions  will  "  leak  out  '•  remarkably 
from  both  sides,  to  journalists  and  neutral  go-be- 
tweens. The  Eastern  and  Western  Allies  will  prob- 
ably begin  quite  soon  to  discuss  an  anti-German 


THE  END  OF  THE  WAR  47 

Zollverein  and  the  co-ordination  of  their  military 
and  naval  organisations  in  the  days  that  are  to  fol- 
low the  war.  A  discussion  of  a  Central  European 
Zollverein  is  already  afoot.  A  general  idea  of  the 
possible  rearrangement  of  the  European  states  after 
the  war  will  grow  up  in  the  common  European  and 
American  mind;  public  men  on  either  side  will  in- 
dicate concordance  with  this  general  idea,  and  some 
neutral  power,  Denmark  or  Spain  or  the  United 
States  or  Holland,  will  invite  representatives  to  an 
informal  discussion  of  these  possibilities.  Prob- 
ably, therefore,  the  peace  negotiations  will  take  the 
extraordinary  form  of  two  simultaneous  conferences 
—  one  of  the  Pledged  Allies,  sitting  probably  in 
Paris  or  London,  and  the  other  of  representatives 
of  all  the  combatants  meeting  in  some  neutral  coun- 
try —  Holland  w^ould  be  the  most  convenient  — 
while  the  war  will  still  be  going  on.  The  Dutch 
conference  would  be  in  immediate  contact  by  tele- 
phone and  telegraph  with  the  Allied  conference  and 
with  Berlin.  .  .  . 

The  broad  conditions  of  a  possible  peace  will  be- 
gin to  get  stated  towards  the  end  of  1916,  and  a 
certain  lassitude  will  creep  over  the  operations  in 
the  field.  .  .  .  The  process  of  exhaustion  will  prob- 
ably have  reached  such  a  point  by  that  time  that  it 


48  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

will  be  a  primary  fact  in  the  consciousness  of  com- 
mon citizens  of  every  belligerent  country.  The 
common  life  of  all  Europe  will  have  become  —  mis- 
erable. Conclusive  blows  will  have  receded  out  of 
the  imagination  of  the  contending  Powers.  The 
war  will  have  reached  its  fourth  and  last  stage  as  a 
war.  The  war  of  the  great  attack  will  have  given 
place  to  the  war  of  the  military  deadlock ;  the  war 
of  the  deadlock  will  have  gone  on,  and  as  the  great 
combatants  become  enfeebled  relatively  to  the 
smaller  States,  there  will  have  been  a  gradual  shift- 
ing of  the  interest  to  the  war  of  treasons  and 
diplomacies  in  the  Eastern  Mediterranean. 

Quickly  thereafter  the  last  phase  will  be  develop- 
ing into  predominance,  in  which  each  group  of  na- 
tions will  be  most  concerned,  no  longer  about  vic- 
tories or  conquest,  but  about  securing  for  itself  the 
best  chances  of  rapid  economic  recuperation  and 
social  reconstruction.  The  commercial  treaties, 
the  arrangements  for  future  associated  action,  made 
by  the  great  Allies  among  themselves  will  appear 
more  and  more  important  to  them,  and  the  mere 
question  of  boundaries  less  and  less.  It  will  dawn 
upon  Europe  that  she  has  already  dissipated  the 
resources  that  have  enabled  her  to  levy  the  tribute 
paid  for  her  investments  in  every  quarter  of  the 


THE  END  OF  THE  WAR  49 

earth,  and  that  neither  the  Germans  nor  their  an- 
tagonists will  be  able  for  many  years  to  go  on  with 
those  projects  for  world  exploitation  w^hich  lay  at 
the  root  of  the  great  war.  Very  jaded  and  ansemic 
nations  will  sit  about  the  table  on  which  the  new 
map  of  Europe  will  be  drawn.  .  .  .  Each  of  the 
diplomatists  will  come  to  that  business  with  a  cer- 
tain pre-occupation.  Each  will  be  thinking  of  his 
country  as  one  thinks  of  a  patient  of  doubtful  pa- 
tience and  temper  who  is  coming-to  out  of  the 
drugged  stupor  of  a  crucial,  ill-conceived,  and  un- 
necessary operation.  .  .  .  Each  will  be  thinking  of 
Labour,  wounded  and  perplexed,  returning  to  the 
disorganised  or  nationalised  factories' from  which 
Capital  has  gone  a-fighting,  and  to  which  it  may 
never  return. 


Ill 

NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION 

The  war  lias  become  a  war  of  exhaustion.  One 
hears  a  great  deal  of  the  idea  that  ''  financial  col- 
lapse ''  may  bring  it  to  an  end.  A  number  of  peo- 
ple seem  to  be  convinced  that  a  war  cannot  be  waged 
without  money,  that  soldiers  must  be  paid,  muni- 
tions must  be  bought;  that  for  this  money  is  neces- 
sary and  the  consent  of  bank  depositors ;  so  that  if 
all  the  wealth  of  the  world  were  nominally  possessed 
by  some  one  man  in  a  little  office  he  could  stop  the 
war  by  saying  simply,  "  I  will  lend  you  no  more 
money.'' 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  money  is  a  power  only 
in  so  far  as  people  believe  in  it  and  Governments 
sustain  it.  If  a  State  is  sufficiently  strong  and  well 
organised,  its  control  over  the  money  power  is  un- 
limited. If  it  can  rule  its  people,  and  if  it  has  the 
necessary  resources  of  men  and  material  within  its 
borders,  it  can  go  on  in  a  state  of  war  so  long  as 
these  things  last,  with  almost  any  flimsy  sort  of 
substitute  for  money  that  it  chooses  to  print.     It 

50 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  51 

can  enroll  and  use  the  men,  and  seize  and  work  the 
material.  It  can  take  over  the  land  and  cultivate 
it  and  distribute  its  products.  The  little  man  in  the 
office  is  only  a  power  because  the  State  chooses  to 
recognise  his  claim.  So  long  as  he  is  convenient  he 
seems  to  be  a  power.  So  soon  as  the  State  is  intel- 
ligent enough  and  strong  enough  it  can  do  without 
him.  It  can  take  what  it  wants,  and  tell  him  to 
go  and  hang  himself.  That  is  the  melancholy  ulti- 
mate of  the  usurer.  That  is  the  quintessence  of 
"  finance."  All  credit  is  State  made,  and  what  the 
State  has  made  the  State  can  alter  or  destroy. 

The  owner  and  the  creditor  have  never  had  any 
other  power  to  give  or  withhold  credit  than  the 
credit  that  was  given  to  them.  They  exist  by  suf- 
ferance or  superstition  and  not  of  necessity. 

It  is  the  habit  of  overlooking  this  little  flaw  in 
the  imperatives  of  ownership  that  enables  people 
to  say  that  this  war  cannot  go  on  beyond  such  and 
such  a  date  —  the  end  of  1916  is  much  in  favour  just 
now  —  because  we  cannot  pay  for  it.  It  would  be 
about  as  reasonable  to  expect  a  battle  to  end  because 
a  landlord  had  ordered  the  soldiers  off  his  estate. 
So  long  as  there  are  men  to  fight  and  stuff  to  fight 
with  the  war  can  go  on.  There  is  bankruptcy,  but 
the  bankruptcy  of  States  is  not  like  the  bankruptcy 


52  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

of  individuals.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  an  undis- 
charged bankrupt  who  is  forbidden  to  carry  on 
among  States.  A  State  may  keep  on  going  bank- 
rupt indefinitely  and  still  carry  on.  It  will  be  the 
next  step  in  our  prophetic  exercise  to  examine  the 
differences  between  State  bankruptcy  and  the  bank- 
ruptcy of  a  subject  of  the  State. 

The  belligerent  Powers  are  approaching  a  phase 
when  they  will  no  longer  be  paying  anything  like 
twenty  shillings  in  the  pound.  In  a  very  definite 
sense  they  are  not  paying  twenty  shillings  in  the 
pound  now.  That  is  not  going  to  stop  the  war,  but 
it  involves  a  string  of  consequences  and  possibilities 
of  the*  utmost  importance  to  our  problem  of  what 
is  coming  when  the  war  is  over. 

The  exhaustion  that  will  bring  this  war  to  its  end 
at  last  is  a  process  of  destruction  of  men  and  mate- 
rial. The  process  of  bankruptcy  that  is  also  going 
on  is  nothing  of  the  sort.  Bankruptcy  destroys  no 
concrete  thing;  it  merely  writes  off  a  debt;  it  de- 
stroys a  financial  but  not  an  economic  reality.  It 
is,  in  itself,  a  mental,  not  a  physical  fact.  "A" 
owes  "  B  '^  a  debt ;  he  goes  bankrupt  and  pays  a 
dividend,  a  fraction  of  his  debt,  and  gets  his  dis- 
charge. "  B's  "  feelings,  as  we  novelists  used  to 
say,  are  "  better  imagined  than  described  " ;  he  does 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  53 

Ms  best  to  satisfy  himself  that  "A''  can  pay  no 
more,  and  then  "  A  "  and  "  B  "  both  go  about  their 
business  again.  In  England,  if  "  A "  is  a  suffi- 
ciently poor  man  not  to  be  formidable,  and  has  gone 
bankrupt  on  a  small  scale,  he  gets  squeezed  fero- 
ciously to  extract  the  last  farthing  from  him;  he 
may  find  himself  in  jail  and  his  home  utterly 
smashed  up.  If  he  is  a  richer  man,  and  has  failed 
on  a  larger  scale,  our  law  is  more  sympathetic,  and 
he  gets  off  much  more  easily.  Often  his  creditors 
find  it  advisable  to  arrange  with  him  so  that  he  will 
still  carry  on  with  his  bankrupt  concern.  They 
find  it  better  to  let  him  carry  on  than  to  smash  him 
up.  There  are  countless  men  in  the  world  living 
very  comfortably  indeed,  and  running  businesses 
that  were  once  their  own  property  for  their  credit- 
ors. There  are  still  more  who  have  written  off 
princely  debts  and  do  not  seem  to  be  a  "ha'porth 
the  worse."  And  their  creditors  have  found  a  balm 
in  time  and  philosophy.  Bankruptcy  is  only  pain- 
ful and  destructive  to  small  people  and  helpless 
people;  but  then  for  them  everything  is  painful 
and  destructive;  it  can  be  a  very  light  matter 
to  big  people;  it  may  be  almost  painless  to  a 
State. 

If  England  went  bankrupt  in  the  completest  way 


54  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

to-morrow,  and  repudiated  all  its  debts  both  as  a 
nation  and  as  a  community  of  individuals,  if  it  de- 
clared, if  I  may  use  a  self-contradictory  phrase,  a 
permanent  moratorium,  there  would  be  not  an  acre 
of  ploughed  land  in  the  country,  not  a  yard  of  cloth 
or  a  loaf  of  bread  the  less  for  that.  There  would 
be  nothing  material  destroyed  within  the  State. 
There  would  be  no  immediate  convulsion.  Use  and 
wont  would  carry  most  people  on  some  days  before 
they  even  began  to  doubt  whether  So-and-so  could 
pay  his  way,  and  whether  there  would  be  wages  at 
the  end  of  the  week. 

But  people  who  lived  upon  rent  or  investments 
or  pensions  would  presently  be  very  busy  thinking 
how  they  were  going  to  get  food  when  the  butcher 
and  baker  insisted  upon  cash.  It  would  be  only 
with  comparative  slowness  that  the  bulk  of  men 
would  realise  that  a  fabric  of  confidence  and  confi- 
dent assumptions  had  vanished;  that  cheques  and 
bank  notes  and  token  money  and  every  sort  of  bond 
and  scrip  were  worthless,  that  employers  had  noth- 
ing to  pay  with,  shopkeepers  no  means  of  jDrocuring 
stock,  that  metallic  money  was  disappearing,  and 
that  a  paralysis  had  come  upon  the  community. 
Such  an  establishment  as  a  workhouse  or  an  old- 
fashioned  monastery,  living  upon  the  produce  of  its 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  55 

own  farming  and  supplying  all  its  own  labour, 
would  be  least  embarrassed  amidst  the  general  per- 
plexity. For  it  would  not  be  upon  a  credit  basis, 
but  a  socialistic  basis,  a  basis  of  direct  reality,  and 
its  need  for  payments  would  be  incidental.  And 
land-owning  peasants  growing  their  own  food  would 
carry  on,  and  small  cultivating  occupiers,  who  could 
easily  fall  back  on  barter  for  anything  needed.  But 
the  mass  of  the  population  in  such  a  country  as 
England  w^ould  soon  be  standing  about  in  hopeless 
perplexity  and  on  the  verge  of  frantic  panic  —  al- 
though there  was  just  as  much  food  to  be  eaten,  just 
as  many  houses  to  live  in,  and  just  as  much  work 
needing  to  be  done.  Suddenly  the  pots  would  be 
empty,  and  famine  would  be  in  the  land,  although 
the  farms  and  butchers'  shops  were  still  well 
stocked.  The  general  community  would  be  like  an 
automobile  when  the  magneto  fails.  Everything 
would  be  there  and  in  order,  except  for  the  spark  of 
credit  which  keeps  the  engine  working. 

That  is  how  quite  a  lot  of  people  seem  to  imagine 
national  bankruptcy :  as  a  catastrophic  jolt.  It  is 
a  quite  impossible  nightmare  of  cessation.  The 
reality  is  the  completest  contrast.  All  the  bellig- 
erent countries  of  the  world  are  at  the  present  mo- 
ment   quietly,    steadily    and    progressively    going 


56  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

bankrupt,  and  the  mass  of  people  are  not  even  aware 
of  this  process  of  insolvency. 

An  individual  when  he  goes  bankrupt  is  measured 
by  the  monetary  standard  of  the  country  he  is  in ; 
he  pays  ^ye  or  ten  or  fifteen  or  so  many  shillings  in 
the  pound.  A  community  in  debt  does  something 
which  is  in  effect  the  same,  but  in  appearance  rather 
different.  It  still  pays  a  pound,  but  the  purchasing 
power  of  the  pound  has  diminished.  This  is  what 
is  happening  all  over  the  world  to-day;  there  is  a 
rise  in  prices.  This  is  automatic  national  bank- 
ruptcy ;  unplanned,  though  perhaps  not  unforeseen. 
It  is  not  a  deliberate  State  act,  but  a  consequence 
of  the  interruption  of  communications,  the  diver- 
sion of  productive  energy,  the  increased  demand  for 
many  necessities  by  the  Government  and  the  general 
waste  under  war  conditions.  At  the  beginning  of 
this  war  England  had  a  certain  national  debt;  it 
has  paid  off  none  of  that  original  debt ;  it  has  added 
to  it  tremendously;  so  far  as  money  and  bankers' 
records  go  it  still  owes  and  intends  to  pay  that 
original  debt ;  but  if  you  translate  the  language  of 
£  s.  d.  into  realities,  you  will  find  that  in  loaves  or 
iron  or  copper  or  hours  of  toil,  or  indeed  in  any 
reality  except  gold,  it  owes  now,  so  far  as  that  orig- 
inal debt  goes,  far  less  than  it  did  at  the  outset.     As 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  57 

the  war  goes  on  and  the  rise  in  prices  continues,  the 
subsequent  borrowings  and  contracts  are  under- 
going a  similar  bankrupt  reduction.  The  attempt 
of  the  landlord  of  small  weekly  and  annual  proper- 
ties to  adjust  himself  to  the  new  conditions  by  rais- 
ing rents  is  being  checked  by  legislation  in  Great 
Britain,  and  has  been  completely  checked  in  France. 
The  attempts  of  labour  to  readjust  wages  have  been 
partially  successful  in  spite  of  the  eloquent  protests 
of  those  great  exponents  of  plain  living,  economy, 
abstinence,  and  honest,  modest,  underpaid  toil, 
Messrs.  Asquith,  McKenna,  and  Runciman.  It  is 
doubtful  if  the  rise  in  wages  is  keeping  pace  with 
the  rise  in  prices.  So  far  as  it  fails  to  do  so  the 
load  is  on  the  usual  pack  animal,  the  poor  man. 
The  rest  of  the  loss  falls  chiefly  upon  the  creditor 
class,  the  people  with  fixed  incomes  and  fixed  sal- 
aries, the  landlords  who  have  let  at  long  leases,  the 
people  with  pensions,  endowed  institutions,  the 
Church,  insurance  companies,  and  the  like.  They 
are  all  being  scaled  down.  They  are  all  more  able 
to  stand  scaling  down  than  the  proletarians. 

Assuming  that  it  is  possible  to  bring  up  wages  to 
the  level  of  the  higher  prices,  and  that  the  rise  in 
rents  can  be  checked  by  legislation  or  captured  by 
taxation,  the  rise  in  prices  is,  on  the  whole,  a  thing 


58  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

to  the  advantage  of  the  propertyless  man  as  against 
accumulated  property.  It  writes  off  the  past  and 
clears  the  way  for  a  fresh  start  in  the  future.  An 
age  of  cheapness  is  an  old  usurer's  age.  England 
before  the  war  was  a  paradise  of  ancient  usuries; 
everywhere  were  great  houses  and  enclosed  parks; 
the  multitude  of  gentlemen's  servants  and  golf  clubs 
and  such  like  excrescences  of  the  comfort  of  pros- 
perous people  was  perpetually  increasing ;  it  did  not 
"  pay ''  to  build  labourers'  cottages,  and  the  more 
expensive  sort  of  automobile  had  driven  the  bicycle 
as  a  pleasure  vehicle  off  the  roads.  Western  Eu- 
rope w^as  running  to  fat  and  not  to  muscle,  as 
America  is  to-day. 

But  if  that  old  usurer's  age  is  over,  the  young 
usurer's  age  may  be  coming.  To  meet  such  enor- 
mous demands  as  this  war  is  making  there  are  three 
chief  courses  open  to  the  modern  State.  The  first 
is  to  take  —  to  get  men  by  conscription  and  material 
by  requisition.  The  British  Government  takes 
more  modestly  than  any  other  in  the  world ;  its  tra- 
dition from  Magna  Charta  onward,  the  legal  train- 
ing of  most  of  its  members,  all  make  towards  a  rever- 
ence for  private  ownership  and  private  claims,  as 
opposed  to  the  claims  of  State  and  commonweal, 
unequalled  in  the  world's  history.     The  next  course 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  59 

of  a  nation  in  need  is  to  tax  and  pay  for  what  it 
wants,  which  is  a  fractional  and  more  evenly  dis- 
tributed method  of  taking.  Both  of  these  methods 
raise  prices,  the  second  most  so,  and  so  facilitate 
the  automatic  release  of  the  future  from  the  hoard- 
ing of  the  past.  So  far  all  the  belligerent  Govern- 
ments have  taxed  on  the  timid  side.  Finally  there 
is  the  loan.  This  mortgages  the  future  to  the  pres- 
ent necessity,  and  it  has  so  far  been  the  predominant 
source  of  war  credits.  It  is  the  method  that  pro- 
duces least  immediate  friction  in  the  State;  it  em- 
ploys all  the  savings  of  surplus  income  that  the  un- 
rest of  civil  enterprise  leaves  idle;  it  has  an  effect 
of  creating  property  by  a  process  that  destroys  the 
substance  of  the  community.  In  Germany  an  enor- 
mous bulk  of  property  has  been  mortgaged  to  sup- 
ply the  subscriptions  to  the  war  loans,  and  those 
holdings  have  again  been  hypothecated  to  subscribe 
to  subsequent  loans.  The  Pledged  Allies  with 
longer  stockings  have  not  yet  got  to  this  pitch  of 
overlapping.  But  everywhere  in  Europe  what  is 
happening  is  a  great  transformation  of  the  property 
owner  into  a  rentier,  and  the  passing  of  realty  into 
the  hands  of  the  State.  At  the  end  of  the  war  Great 
Britain  will  probably  find  herself  with  a  national 
debt  so  great  that  she  will  be  committed  to  the  pay- 


60  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

ment  of  an  annual  interest  greater  in  figures  than 
the  entire  national  expenditure  before  the  war.  As 
an  optimistic  ladj  put  it  the  other  day :  "  All  the 
people  who  aren't  killed  will  be  living  quite  com- 
fortably on  War  Loan  for  the  rest  of  their  lives/' 

But  part,  at  least,  of  the  bulk  of  this  wealth  will 
be  imaginary  rather  than  real  because  of  the  rise  in 
prices,  in  wages,  in  rent,  and  in  taxation.  Most  of 
us  who  are  buying  the  British  and  French  War 
Loans  have  no  illusions  on  that  score ;  we  know  we 
are  buying  an  income  of  diminishing  purchasing 
power.  Yet  it  would  be  a  poor  creature  in  these 
days  when  there  is  scarcely  a  possible  young  man 
in  one's  circle  who  has  not  quite  freely  and  cheer- 
fully staked  his  life  who  was  not  prepared  to  con- 
sider his  investments  as  being  also  to  an  undefined 
extent  a  national  subscription. 

A  rise  in  prices  is  not,  however,  the  only  process 
that  will  check  the  appearance  of  a  new  rich  usurer 
class  after  the  war.  There  is  something  else  ahead 
that  has  happened  already  in  Germany,  that  is 
quietly  coming  about  among  the  Allies,  and  that  is 
the  cessation  of  gold  payments.  In  Great  Britain, 
of  course,  the  pound  note  is  still  convertible  into  a 
golden  sovereign;  but  Great  Britain  will  not  get 
through  the  war  on  those  terms.     There  comes  a 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  61 

point  in  the  stress  upon  a  Government  when  it  must 
depart  from  the  austerer  line  of  financial  rectitude 
—  and  tamper  in  some  way  with  currency.  Sooner 
or  later,  and  probably  in  all  cases  before  1917,  all 
the  belligerents  will  be  forced  to  adopt  inconvertible 
paper  money  for  their  internal  uses.  There  will  be 
British  assignats  or  greenbacks.  It  will  seem  to 
many  financial  sentimentalists  almost  as  though 
Great  Britain  were  hauling  down  a  flag  when  the 
sovereign,  which  has  already  disappeared  into  bank 
and  Treasury  coffers,  is  locked  up  there  and  re- 
served for  international  trade.  But  Great  Britain 
has  other  sentiments  to  consider  than  the  finer  feel- 
ings of  bankers  and  the  delicacies  of  usury.  The 
pound  British  will  come  out  of  this  war  like  a  com- 
pany out  of  a  well-shelled  trench  —  attenuated. 

Depreciation  of  the  currency  means,  of  course, 
a  continuing  rise  in  prices,  a  continuing  writing  off 
of  debt.  If  labour  has  any  real  grasp  of  its  true 
interests  it  wdll  not  resent  this.  It  will  merely  in- 
sist steadfastly  —  quite  regardless  of  that  eloquent 
trio  of  underpaid  and  parsimonious  lawyers, 
Messrs.  Asquith,  McKenna,  and  Runciman  —  on  a 
proper  adjustment  of  its  wages  to  the  new  standard. 
On  that  point,  however,  it  will  be  better  to  write 
later.  .  .  . 


62  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

Let  us  see  how  far  we  have  got  in  this  guessing. 
We  have  considered  reasons  that  seem  to  point  to 
the  destruction  of  a  great  amount  of  old  property 
and  old  debt,  and  the  creation  of  a  great  volume 
of  new  debt  before  the  end  of  the  war,  and  we  have 
adopted  the  ideas  that  currency  will  probably  have 
depreciated  more  and  more  and  prices  risen  right 
up  to  the  very  end.  There  will  be  by  that  time  a 
general  habit  of  saving  throughout  the  community, 
a  habit  more  firmly  established  perhaps  in  the  prop- 
ertied than  in  the  wages-earning  class.  People  will 
be  growing  accustomed  to  a  dear  and  insecure 
world.  They  will  have  become  cautious,  desirous 
of  saving  and  security.  Directly  the  phase  of  enor- 
mous war  loans  ends,  the  new  class  of  rentiers  hold- 
ing the  various  great  new  national  loans  will  find 
themselves  drawing  this  collectively  vast  income 
and  anxious  to  invest  it.  They  will  for  a  time  be 
receiving  the  bulk  of  the  unearned  income  of  the 
world.  Here,  in  the  high  prices  representing  de- 
mand and  the  need  for  some  reinvestment  of  inter- 
est representing  supply,  we  have  two  of  the  chief 
factors  that  are  supposed  to  be  necessary  to  a  phase 
of  business  enterprise.  Will  the  economic  history 
of  the  next  few  decades  be  the  story  of  a  restoration 
of  the  capitalistic  system  upon  a  new  basis?     Shall 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  63 

we  all  become  investors,  speculators,  or  workers 
toiling  our  way  to  a  new  period  of  security,  cheap- 
ness and  low  interest,  a  restoration  of  the  park,  the 
enclosure,  the  gold  standard  and  the  big  automobile, 
with  only  this  difference  —  that  the  minimum  wage 
will  be  somewhere  about  two  pounds,  and  that  a  five- 
pound  note  will  purchase  about  as  much  as  a  couple 
of  guineas  would  do  in  1913? 

That  is  practically  parallel  with  what  happened 
in  the  opening  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  after 
the  Napoleonic  wars,  and  it  is  not  an  agreeable  out- 
look for  those  who  love  the  common  man  or  the  no- 
bility of  life.  But  if  there  is  any  one  principle 
sounder  than  another  of  all  those  that  guide  the 
amateur  in  prophecy,  it  is  that  history  never  repeats 
itself.  The  human  material  in  which  those  mone- 
tary changes  and  those  developments  of  credit  will 
occur  will  be  entirely  different  from  the  social  me- 
dium of  a  hundred  years  ago. 

The  nature  of  the  State  has  altered  profoundly  in 
the  last  century.  The  later  eighteenth  and  earlier 
nineteenth  centuries  constituted  a  period  of  extreme 
individualism.  What  were  called  "  economic 
forces"  had  unrestricted  play.  In  the  minds  of 
such  people  as  Harriet  Martineau  and  Herbert 
Spencer   they   superseded   God.     People   were   no 


64  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

longer  reproached  for  "  flying  in  the  face  of  Provi- 
dence/' but  for  "  flying  in  the  face  of  Political  Econ- 
omy/^ In  that  state  of  freedom  you  got  whatever 
you  could  in  any  way  you  could ;  you  were  not  your 
neighbour's  keeper,  and  except  that  it  interfered 
with  the  enterprise  of  pickpockets,  burglars  and  for- 
gers, and  kept  the  dice  loaded  in  favour  of  landlords 
and  lawyers,  the  State  stood  aside  from  the  great 
drama  of  human  getting.  For  industrialism  and 
speculation  the  State's  guiding  maxim  was  laissez 
faire.  The  State  is  now  far  less  aloof  and  far 
more  constructive.  It  is  far  more  aware  of  itself 
and  a  common  interest.  Germany  has  led  the  way 
from  a  system  of  individuals  and  voluntary  associa- 
tions in  competition  towards  a  new  order  of  things, 
a  completer  synthesis.  This  most  modern  State  is 
far  less  a  swarming  conflict  of  businesses  than  a 
great  national  business.  It  will  emerge  from  this 
war  much  more  so  than  it  went  in,  and  the  thing  is 
and  will  remain  so  plain  and  obvious  that  only  the 
greediest  and  dullest  people  among  the  Pledged 
Allies  will  venture  to  disregard  it.  The  Allied  na- 
tions, too,  will  have  to  rescue  their  economic  future 
from  individual  grab  and  grip  and  chance. 

The  second  consideration  that  forbids  us  to  an- 
ticipate any  parallelism  of  the  history  of  1915-45 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  65 

with  1815-45  is  the  greater  lucidity  of  the  general 
mind,  the  fact  that  all  Western  Europe,  down  to  the 
agricultural  labourers,  can  read  and  write  and  does 
read  newspapers  and  "  get  ideas."  The  explana- 
tion of  economic  and  social  processes  that  were  mys- 
terious to  the  elect  a  hundred  years  ago  are  now  the 
commonplaces  of  the  tap-room.  What  happened 
then  darkly,  and  often  unconsciously,  must  happen 
in  1916-26  openly  and  controllably.  The  current 
bankruptcy  and  liquidation  and  the  coming  recon- 
struction of  the  economic  system  of  Europe  will  go 
on  in  a  quite  unprecedented  amount  of  light.  We 
shall  see  and  know  what  is  happening  much  more 
clearly  than  anything  of  the  kind  has  ever  been 
seen  before. 

It  is  not  only  that  people  will  have  behind  them, 
as  a  light  upon  what  is  happening,  the  experiences 
and  discussions  of  a  hundred  years,  but  that  the  in- 
ternational situation  will  be  far  plainer  than  it  has 
ever  been.  This  war  has  made  Germany  the  central 
fact  in  all  national  affairs  about  the  earth.  It  is 
not  going  to  destroy  Germany,  and  it  seems  improb- 
able that  either  defeat  or  victory,  or  any  mixture 
of  these,  will  immediately  alter  the  cardinal  fact  of 
Germany's  organised  aggressiveness.  The  war  will 
not  end  the  conflict  of  anti-Germany  and  Germany. 


66  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

That  will  only  end  when  the  results  of  fifty  years 
of  aggressive  education  in  Germany  have  worn 
away.  This  will  be  so  plain  that  the  great  bulk  of 
people  everywhere  will  not  only  see  their  changing 
economic  relationships  far  more  distinctly  than 
such  things  have  been  seen  hitherto,  but  that  they 
will  see  them  as  they  have  never  been  seen  before, 
definitely  oriented  to  the  threat  of  German  world 
predominance.  The  landlord  who  squeezes,  the 
workman  who  strikes  and  shirks,  the  lawyer  who 
fogs  and  obstructs,  will  know,  and  will  know  that 
most  people  know,  that  what  he  does  is  done,  not 
under  an  empty,  regardless  heaven,  but  in  the  face 
of  an  unsleeping  enemy  and  in  disregard  of  a  con- 
tinuous urgent  necessity  for  unity. 

So  far  we  have  followed  this  speculation  upon 
fairly  firm  ground,  but  now  our  inquiry  must  plunge 
into  a  jungle  of  far  more  difficult  and  uncertain  pos- 
sibilities. Our  next  stage  brings  us  to  the  question 
of  how  people  and  peoples  and  classes  of  people  are 
going  to  react  to  the  new  conditions  of  need  and 
knowledge  this  war  will  have  brought  about,  and 
to  the  new  demands  that  will  be  made  upon  them. 
This  is  really  a  question  of  how  far  they  will  prove 
able  to  get  out  of  the  habits  and  traditions  of  their 
former  social  state,  how  far  they  will  be  able  to 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  67 

take  generous  views  and  make  sacrifices  and  unself- 
ish efforts,  and  how  far  they  will  go  in  self-seeking 
or  class  selfishness  regardless  of  the  common  wel- 
fare. This  is  a  question  we  have  to  ask  separately 
of  each  great  nation,  and  of  the  Central  Powers  as 
a  whole,  and  of  the  Allies  as  a  whole,  before  we  can 
begin  to  estimate  the  posture  of  the  peoples  of  the 
world  in,  say,  1946. 

Now  let  me  here  make  a  sort  of  parenthesis  on 
human  nature.  It  will  be  rather  platitudinous,  but 
it  is  a  necessary  reminder  for  what  follows. 

So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  observe,  nobody  lives 
steadily  at  one  moral  level.  If  we  are  wise  w^e 
shall  treat  no  man  and  no  class  —  and  for  the  mat- 
ter of  that  no  nation  —  as  either  steadfastly  malig- 
nant or  steadfastly  disinterested.  There  are  phases 
in  my  life  when  I  could  die  quite  cheerfully  for  an 
idea;  there  are  phases  when  I  would  not  stir  six 
yards  to  save  a  human  life.  Most  people  fluctuate 
between  such  extremes.  Most  people  are  self-seek- 
ing, but  most  people  will  desist  from  a  self-seeking 
cause  if  they  see  plainly  and  clearly  that  it  is  not 
in  the  general  interest,  and  much  more  readily  if 
they  also  perceive  that  other  people  are  of  the  same 
mind  and  know  that  they  know  their  course  is  un- 
sound.    The  fundamental  error  of  orthodox  polit- 


68  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

ical  economy  and  of  Marxian  socialism  is  to  as- 
sume the  inveterate  selfishness  of  every  one.  But 
most  people  are  a  little  more  disposed  to  believe 
what  it  is  to  their  interest  to  believe  than  the  con- 
trary. Most  people  abandon  with  reluctance  ways 
of  living  and  doing  that  have  served  them  well. 
Most  people  can  see  the  neglect  of  duty  in  other 
classes  more  plainly  than  they  do  in  their  own. 
This  war  has  brought  back  into  the  everyday  human 
life  of  Europe  the  great  and  overriding  conception 
of  devotion  to  a  great  purpose.  But  that  does  not 
imply  clear-headedness  in  correlating  the  ways  of 
one's  ordinary  life  with  this  great  purpose.  It  is  no 
good  treating  as  cynical  villainy  things  that  merely 
exhibit  the  incapacity  of  our  minds  to  live  con- 
sistently. One  Labour  paper  a  month  or  so  ago 
was  contrasting  Mr.  Asquith's  eloquent  appeals  to 
the  working  man  to  economise  and  forgo  any  rise 
in  wages  with  the  photographs  that  were  appearing 
simultaneously  in  the  smart  papers  of  the  very 
smart  marriage  of  Mr.  Asquith's  daughter.  I  sub- 
mit that  by  that  sort  of  standard  none  of  us  will  be 
blameless.  But  without  any  condemnation,  it  is 
easy  to  understand  that  the  initiative  to  tax  almost 
to  extinction  large  automobiles,  wedding  dresses, 
champagne,  pate  de  foie  gras  and  enclosed  parks, 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  69 

instead  of  gin  and  water,  bank  holiday  outings  and 
Virginia  shag,  is  less  likely  to  come  from  the  Prime 
Minister  class  than  from  the  class  of  dock  labourers. 
There  is  an  unconscious  class  war  due  to  habit  and 
insufScient  thinking  and  insufficient  sympathy  that 
will  play  a  large  part  in  the  distribution  of  the 
burthen  of  the  State  bankruptcy  that  is  in  progress, 
and  in  the  subsequent  readjustment  of  national  life. 

And  having  made  this  parenthesis,  I  may  perhaps 
go  on  to  point  out  the  peculiar  limitations  under 
which  various  classes  will  be  approaching  the  phase 
of  reorganisation,  without  being  accused  of  mak- 
ing this  or  that  class  the  villain  of  an  anticipatory 
drama. 

Now,  three  great  classes  will  certainly  resist  the 
valiant  reconstruction  of  economic  life  with  a  vig- 
our in  exact  proportion  to  their  baseness,  stupidity 
and  narrowness  of  outlook.  They  will,  as  classes, 
come  up  for  a  moral  judgment,  on  whose  verdict  the 
whole  future  of  Western  civilisation  depends.  If 
they  cannot  achieve  a  considerable,  an  unprec- 
edented display  of  self-sacrifice,  unselfish  wisdom, 
and  constructive  vigour,  if  the  community  as  a 
whole  can  produce  no  forces  sufficient  to  restrain 
their  lower  tendencies,  then  the  intelligent  father 
had  better  turn  his  children's  faces  towards  the 


70  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

New  World.     For  Europe  will  be  busy  with  social 
disorder  for  a  century. 

The  first  great  class  is  the  class  that  owns  and 
holds  land  and  land-like  claims  upon  the  commun- 
ity, from  the  Throne  downward.  This  Court  and 
land-holding  class  cannot  go  on  being  rich  and  liv- 
ing rich  during  the  strains  of  the  coming  years. 
The  reconstructing  world  cannot  bear  it.  What- 
ever rises  in  rent  may  occur  through  the  rise  in 
prices,  must  go  to  meet  the  tremendous  needs  of  the 
State.  This  class,  which  has  so  much  legislative 
and  administrative  power  in  at  least  three  of  the 
great  belligerents  —  in  Great  Britain  and  Germany 
perhaps  most  so  —  must  be  prepared  to  see  itself 
taxed,  and  must  be  willing  to  assist  in  its  own  taxa- 
tion to  the  very  limit  of  its  statistical  increment. 
The  almost  vindictive  greed  of  the  landowners  that 
blackened  the  history  of  England  after  Waterloo, 
and  brought  Great  Britain  within  sight  of  revolu- 
tion, must  not  be  repeated.  The  British  Empire 
cannot  afford  a  revolution  in  the  face  of  the  Central 
European  Powers.  But  in  the  past  century  there 
has  been  an  enormous  change  in  men's  opinions  and 
consciences  about  property;  whereas  we  were  In- 
dividualists, now  we  are  Socialists.  The  British 
lord,  the  German  junker,  has  none  of  the  sense  of 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  71 

unqualified  rights  that  his  great-grandfather  had, 
and  he  is  aware  of  a  vigour  of  public  criticism  that 
did  not  exist  in  the  former  time.  .  .  .  How  far  will 
these  men  get  out  of  the  tradition  of  their  birth  and 
upbringing? 

Next  comes  the  great  class  of  lawyers  who, 
through  the  idiotic  method  of  voting  in  use  in  mod- 
ern democracies,  are  able  practically  to  rule  Great 
Britain,  and  who  are  powerful  and  influential  in 
all  democratic  countries.  In  order  to  secure  a  cer- 
tain independence  and  integrity  in  its  courts.  Great 
Britain  long  ago  established  the  principle  of  enor- 
mously overpaying  its  judges  and  lawyers.  The 
natural  result  has  been  to  give  our  law  courts  and 
the  legal  profession  generally  a  bias  in  favour  of 
private  wealth  against  both  the  public  interest  and 
the  proletariat.  It  has  also  given  our  higher  na- 
tional education  an  overwhelming  direction  towards 
the  training  of  advocates  and  against  science  and 
constructive  statecraft.  An  ordinary  lawyer  has 
no  idea  of  making  anything ;  that  tendency  has  been 
destroyed  in  his  mind ;  he  waits  and  sees  and  takes 
advantage  of  opportunity.  Everything  that  can 
possibly  be  done  in  England  is  done  to  make  our 
rulers  Micawbers  and  Artful  Dodgers.  And  one 
of  the  most  anxious  questions  that  a  Briton  can  ask 


72  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

himself  to-day  is  just  how  far  the  gigantic  suffer- 
ings and  still  more  monstrous  warnings  of  this  war 
have  shocked  the  good  gentlemen  who  must  steer 
the  ship  of  State  through  the  strong  rapids  of  the 
New  Peace  out  of  this  forensic  levity  their  training 
has  imposed  upon  them.  .  .  .  There,  again,  there 
are  elements  of  hope.  The  lawyer  has  heard  much 
about  himself  in  the  past  few  years.  His  conscience 
may  check  his  tradition.  And  we  have  a  Press  — 
it  has  many  faults,  but  it  is  no  longer  a  lawyer's 
Press.  .  .  . 

And  the  third  class  which  has  immediate  interests 
antagonistic  to  bold  reconstructions  of  our  national 
methods  is  that  vaguer  body,  the  body  of  investing 
capitalists,  the  savers,  the  usurers,  who  live  on  divi- 
dends. It  is  a  vast  class,  but  a  feeble  class  in  com- 
parison with  the  other  two ;  it  is  a  body  rather  than 
a  class,  a  weight  rather  than  a  power.  It  consists 
of  all  sorts  of  people  with  nothing  in  common  ex- 
cept the  receipt  of  unearned  income.  .  .  . 

All  these  classes,  by  instinct  and  the  baser  kinds 
of  reason  also,  will  be  doing  their  best  to  check  the 
rise  in  prices,  stop  and  reverse  the  advance  in  wages, 
prevent  the  debasement  of  the  circulation,  and  facil- 
itate the  return  to  a  gold  standard  and  a  repressive 
social  stability.     They  will  be  resisting  any  com- 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  73 

prehensive  national  reconstruction,  any  increase  in 
public  officials,  any  "  conscription  ''  of  land  or  rail- 
ways or  what  not  for  the  urgent  civil  needs  of  the 
State.  They  will  have  fighting  against  these  tend- 
encies something  in  their  own  consciences,  some- 
thing in  public  opinion,  the  tradition  of  public  de- 
votion their  own  dead  sons  have  revived  —  and  cer- 
tain other  forces. 

They  will  have  over  against  them  the  obvious 
urgent  necessities  of  the  time. 

The  most  urgent  necessity  will  be  to  get  back  the 
vast  moiety  of  the  population  that  has  been  en- 
gaged either  in  military  service  or  the  making  of 
munitions  to  productive  work,  to  the  production  of 
food  and  necessary  things,  and  to  the  restoration 
of  that  export  trade  which,  in  the  case  of  Great 
Britain  at  least,  now  that  her  overseas  investments 
have  been  set  ofe  by  overseas  war  debts,  is  essential 
to  the  food  supply.  There  will  be  coming  back  into 
civil  life,  not  merely  thousands,  but  millions  of  men 
who  have  been  withdrawn  from  it.  They  will  feel 
that  they  have  deserved  well  of  their  country. 
They  will  have  had  their  imaginations  greatly 
quickened  by  being  taken  away  from  the  homes  and 
habits  to  which  they  were  accustomed.  They  will 
have  been  well  fed  and  inured  to  arms,  to  danger, 


74  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

and  tlie  chances  of  death.  They  will  have  no  illu- 
sions about  the  conduct  of  the  war  by  the  governing 
classes,  or  the  worshipful  heroism  of  peers  and 
princes.  They  will  know  just  how  easy  is  courage, 
and  how  hard  is  hardship,  and  the  utter  impossi- 
bility of  doing  well  in  war  or  peace  under  the  orders 
of  detected  fools. 

This  vast  body  will  constitute  a  very  stimulating 
congregation  of  spectators  in  any  attempt  on  the 
part  of  landlord,  lawyer  and  investor  to  resume  the 
old  political  mystery  dance,  in  w^hich  rents  are  to 
be  sent  up  and  wages  down,  while  the  old  feuds  of 
Wales  and  Ireland,  ancient  theological  and  sectar- 
ian jealousies  and  babyish  loyalties,  and  so  forth  are 
to  be  waved  in  the  eyes  of  the  no  longer  fascinated 
realist. 

"  Meanwhile,"  they  will  say,  with  a  stiff  impa- 
tience unusual  in  their  class,  "about  usf  .  .  . 

Here  are  the  makings  of  internal  conflict  in  every 
European  country.  In  Russia  the  landlord  and 
lawyer,  in  France  the  landlord,  are  perhaps  of  less 
account,  and  in  France  the  investor  is  more  uni- 
versal and  jealous.  In  Germany,  where  Junker  and 
Court  are  most  influential  and  brutal,  there  is  a 
larger  and  sounder  and  broader  tradition  of  prac- 
tical efficiency,  a  modernised  legal  profession,  and 


NATIONS  IN  LIQUIDATION  75 

a    more    widely    diffused    scientific    imagination. 

How  far  in  each  country  will  imagination  tri- 
umph over  tradition  and  individualism?  How  far 
does  the  practical  bankruptcy  of  Western  civilisa- 
tion mean  a  revolutionary  smash-up,  and  a  phase 
that  may  last  for  centuries,  of  disorder  and  more 
and  more  futile  conflict  ?  And  how  far  does  it  mean 
a  reconstruction  of  human  society,  within  a  few 
score  of  years,  upon  sounder  and  happier  lines? 
Must  that  reconstruction  be  preceded  by  a  revolu- 
tion in  all  or  any  of  the  countries? 

To  what  extent  can  the  world  produce  the  imag- 
ination it  needs?  That,  so  far,  is  the  most  funda- 
mental question  to  which  our  prophetic  explorations 
have  brought  us. 


IV 


BRAINTREE,  BOOKING,  AND  THE 
FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD 

Will  the  war  be  followed  by  a  period  of  great  dis- 
tress, social  disorder  and  a  revolution  in  Europe, 
or  shall  we  pull  through  the  crisis  without  violent 
disaster?  May  we  even  hope  that  Great  Britain 
will  step  straight  out  of  the  war  into  a  phase  of 
restored  and  increasing  welfare? 

Like  most  people  I  have  been  trying  to  form  some 
sort  of  answer  to  this  question.  My  state  of  mind 
in  the  last  few  months  has  varied  from  a  consider- 
able optimism  to  profound  depression.  I  have  met 
and  talked  to  quite  a  number  of  young  men  in  khaki : 
ex-engineers,  ex-lawyers,  ex-schoolmasters,  ex-busi- 
ness men  of  all  sorts ;  and  the  net  result  of  these  in- 
terviews has  been  a  buoyant  belief  that  there  is  in 
Great  Britain  the  pluck,  the  will,  the  intelligence 
to  do  anything,  however  arduous  and  difficult,  in 
the  way  of  national  reconstruction.  And  on  the 
other  hand  there  is  a  certain  stretch  of  road  between 
Dunmow  and  Coggeshall.  .  .  . 

76 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD  77 

That  stretch  of  road  is  continually  jarring  with 
my  optimistic  thoughts.  It  is  a  strongly  pro-Ger- 
man piece  of  road.  It  supports  allegations  against 
Great  Britain,  as  for  instance  that  the  British  are 
quite  unfit  to  control  their  own  affairs,  let  alone 
those  of  an  empire;  that  they  are  an  incompetent 
people,  a  pig-headedly  stupid  people,  a  wasteful  peo- 
ple, a  people  incapable  of  realising  that  a  man  who 
tills  his  field  badly  is  a  traitor  and  a  weakness  to  his 
country.  .  .  . 

Let  me  place  the  case  of  this  high  road  through 
Braintree  (Bocking  intervening)  before  the  reader. 
It  is,  you  will  say  perhaps,  very  small  beer.  But  a 
straw  shows  the  way  the  wind  blows.  It  is  a  trivial 
matter  of  road  metal,  mud,  and  water-pipes,  but  it 
is  also  diagnostic  of  the  essential  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  the  smooth  and  rapid  reconstruction  of 
Great  Britain  —  and  very  probably  of  the  recon- 
struction of  all  Europe  —  after  the  war.  The 
Braintree  high  road,  I  will  confess,  becomes  at  times 
an  image  of  the  world  for  me.  It  is  a  poor,  spirit- 
less-looking bit  of  road,  with  raw  stones  on  one  side 
of  it.  It  is  also,  I  perceive,  the  high  destiny  of  man 
in  conflict  with  mankind.  It  is  the  way  to  Harwich, 
Holland,  Russia,  China,  and  the  whole  wide  world. 

Even  at  the  first  glance  it  impresses  one  as  not 


78  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

being  the  road  that  would  satisfy  an  energetic  and 
capable  people.  It  is  narrow  for  a  high  road,  and 
in  the  middle  of  it  one  is  checked  by  an  awkward 
bend,  by  cross  roads  that  are  not  exactly  cross 
roads,  so  that  one  has  to  turn  two  blind  corners  to 
get  on  eastward,  and  a  policeman,  I  don't  know  at 
what  annual  cost,  has  to  be  posted  to  nurse  the 
traffic  across.  Beyond  that  point  one  is  struck  by 
the  fact  that  the  south  side  is  considerably  higher 
than  the  north,  that  storm  water  must  run  from 
the  south  side  to  the  north  and  lie  there.  It  does, 
and  the  north  side  has  recently  met  the  trouble  by 
putting  down  raw  flints,  and  so  converting  what 
would  be  a  lake  into  a  sort  of  flint  pudding.  Con- 
sequently one  drives  one's  car  as  much  as  possible 
on  the  south  side  of  this  road.  There  is  a  sugges- 
tion of  hostility  and  repartee  between  north  and 
south  side  in  this  arrangement,  which  the  explorer's 
enquiries  will  confirm.  It  may  be  only  an  acci- 
dental parallelism  with  profounder  fact;  I  do  not 
know.  But  the  middle  of  this  high  road  is  a  fron- 
tier. The  south  side  belongs  to  the  urban  district 
of  Braintree ;  the  north  to  the  rural  district  of  Bock- 
ing. 

If  the  curious  enquirer  will  take  pick  and  shovel 
he  will  find  at  any  rate  one  corresponding  dualism 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD    79 

below  the  surface.  He  will  find  a  Rocking  water 
main  supplying  the  houses  on  the  north  side  and 
a  Rraintree  water  main  supplying  the  south.  I 
rather  suspect  that  the  drains  are  also  in  duplicate. 
The  total  population  of  Rocking  and  Rraintree  is 
probably  little  more  than  thirteen  thousand  souls 
altogether,  but  for  that  there  are  two  water  sup- 
plies, two  sets  of  schools,  two  administrations.  To 
the  passing  observer  the  rurality  of  the  Rocking 
side  is  indistinguishable  from  the  urbanity  of  the 
Rraintree  side;  it  is  just  a  little  muddier.  Rut 
there  are  dietetic  differences.  If  you  will  present 
a  Rocking  rustic  with  a  tin  of  the  canned  fruit  that 
is  popular  with  the  Rraintree  townsfolk,  you  dis- 
cover one  of  these  differences.  A  dustman  peram- 
bulates the  road  on  the  Rraintree  side,  and  canned 
food  becomes  possible  and  convenient  therefore. 
Rut  the  Rraintree  grocers  sell  canned  food  with 
difficulty  into  Rocking.  Rocking,  less  fortunate 
than  its  neighbour,  has  no  dustman  apparently,  and 
is  left  with  the  tin  on  its  hands.  It  can  either  bury 
it  in  its  garden  —  if  it  has  a  garden  —  take  it  out 
for  a  walk  wrapped  in  paper  and  drop  it  quietly  in 
a  ditch,  if  possible  in  the  Rraintree  area,  or  build 
a  cairn  with  it  and  its  predecessors  and  successors 
in  honour  of*  the  Local  Government  Roard  (Presi- 


80  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

dent  £5000,  Parliamentary  Secretary  £1500,  Per- 
manent Secretary  £2000,  Legal  Advisor  £1000  up- 
ward, a  total  administrative  expenditure  of  over 
£300,000  .  .  .  )•  In  <ieatli  Bocking  and  Brain- 
tree  are  still  divided.  They  have  their  separate 
cemeteries.  .  .  . 

Now  to  any  disinterested  observer  there  lies  about 
the  Braiutree-Bocking  railway  station  one  com- 
munity. It  has  common  industries  and  common  in- 
terests. There  is  no  octroi  or  anything  of  that  sort, 
across  the  street.  The  shops  and  inns  on  the  Bock- 
ing side  of  the  main  street  are  indistinguishable 
from  those  on  the  Braintree  side.  The  inhabitants 
of  the  two  communities  intermarry  freely.  If  this 
absurd  separation  did  not  exist  no  one  would  have 
the  impudence  to  establish  it  now.  It  is  wasteful, 
unfair  (because  the  Bocking  piece  is  rather  better 
off  than  Braintree  and  with  fewer  people,  so  that 
there  is  a  difference  in  the  rates)  and  for  nine-tenths 
of  the  community  it  is  more  or  less  of  a  nuisance. 
It  is  also  a  nuisance  to  the  passing  public  because 
of  such  inconvenience  as  the  asymmetrical  main 
road.  It  hinders  local  development  and  the  devel- 
opment of  a  local  spirit.  It  may  of  course  appeal 
perhaps  to  the  humorous  outlook  of  the  followers 
of  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  and  Mr.  Belloc,  who  believe 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD         81 

that  this  war  is  really  a  war  in  the  interests  of 
the  Athanasian  Creed,  fatness,  and  unrestricted 
drink  against  science,  discipline,  and  priggishly 
keeping  fit  enough  to  join  the  army,  as  very  good 
fun  indeed,  good  matter  for  some  jolly  reeling  ballad 
about  Roundabout  and  Roundabout,  the  jolly  town 
of  Roundabout ;  but  to  any  one  else  the  question  of 
how  it  is  that  this  wasteful  Bocking-Braintree  mud- 
dle, with  its  two  boards,  its  two  clerks,  its  two  series 
of  jobs  and  contracts,  manages  to  keep  on,  was  even 
before  the  war  a  sufficiently  discouraging  one.  It 
becomes  now  a  quite  crucial  problem.  Because  the 
muddle  between  the  sides  of  the  main  road  through 
Bocking  and  Braintree  is  not  an  isolated  instance ; 
it  is  a  fair  sample  of  the  way  things  are  done  in 
Great  Britain;  it  is  an  intimation  of  the  way  in 
which  the  great  task  of  industrial  resettlement  that 
the  nation  must  face  may  be  attempted. 

It  is  —  or  shall  I  write,  "  it  may  be  "  ? 

That  is  just  the  question  I  do  not  settle  in  my 
mind.  I  would  like  to  think  that  I  have  hit  upon 
a  particularly  bad  case  of  entangled  local  govern- 
ment. But  it  happens  that  whenever  I  have  looked 
into  local  affairs  I  have  found  the  same  sort  of 
waste  and  —  insobriety  of  arrangement.  When  I 
started,  a  little  while  back,  to  go  to  Braintree  to 


82  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

verify  these  particulars,  I  was  held  up  by  a  flood 
across  the  road  between  Little  Easton  and  Dunmow. 
Every  year  that  road  is  flooded  and  impassable  for 
some  days,  because  a  bit  of  the  affected  stretch  is 
under  the  County  Council  and  a  bit  under  the  Lit- 
tle Easton  parish  council,  and  they  cannot  agree 
about  the  contribution  of  the  latter.  These  things 
bump  against  the  most  unworldly.  And  when  one 
goes  up  the  scale  from  the  urban  district  and  rural 
district  boundaries,  one  finds  equally  crazy  county 
arrangements,  the  same  tangle  of  obstacle  in  the 
way  of  quick,  effective  co-ordinations,  the  same 
needless  multiplicity  of  clerks,  the  same  rich  possi- 
bilities of  litigation,  misunderstanding,  and  dead- 
locks of  opinion  between  areas  whose  only  differ- 
ence is  that  a  mischievous  boundary  has  been  left 
in  existence  between  them.  And  so  on  up  to  West- 
minster.    And  to  still  greater  things.  .  .  . 

I  know  perfectly  well  how  unpleasant  all  this  is 
to  read,  this  outbreak  at  two  localities  that  have 
never  done  me  any  personal  harm  except  a  little 
mud-splashing.  But  this  is  a  thing  that  has  to  be 
said  now,  because  we  are  approaching  a  crisis  when 
dilatory  ways,  muddle,  and  waste  may  utterly  ruin 
us.  This  is  the  way  things  have  been  done  in  Eng- 
land, this  is  our  habit  of  procedure,  and  if  they  are 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD  83 

done  in  this  way  after  the  war  this  Empire  is  going 
to  smash. 

Let  me  add  at  once  that  it  is  quite  possible  that 
things  are  done  almost  as  badly  or  quite  as  badly 
in  Russia  or  France  or  Germany  or  America ;  I  am 
drawing  no  comparisons.  All  of  us  human  beings 
were  made,  I  believe,  of  very  similar  clay,  and  very 
similar  causes  have  been  at  work  everywhere.  Only 
that  excuse,  so  popular  in  England,  will  not  pre- 
vent a  smash  if  we  stick  to  the  old  methods  under 
the  stresses  ahead.  I  do  not  see  that  it  is  any  con- 
solation to  share  in  a  general  disaster. 

And  I  am  sure  that  there  must  be  the  most  de- 
lightful and  picturesque  reasons  why  we  have  all 
this  overlapping  and  waste  and  muddle  in  our  local 
affairs;  why,  to  take  another  example,  the  bound- 
ary of  the  Essex  parishes  of  Newton  and  Widding- 
ton  looks  as  though  it  had  been  sketched  out  by  a 
drunken  man  in  a  runaway  cab  with  a  broken 
spring.  This  Bocking-Braintree  main  road  is,  it 
happens,  an  old  Stane  Street,  along  which  Roman 
legions  marched  to  clean  up  the  councils  and  clerks 
of  the  British  tribal  system  two  thousand  years  ago, 
and  no  doubt  an  historian  could  spin  delightful 
consequences ;  this  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  these 
quaint  complications  in  English  affairs  mean  in  the 


84  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

aggregate  enormous  obstruction  and  waste  of  hu- 
man energy.  It  does  not  alter  the  much  graver  fact, 
the  fact  that  darkens  all  my  outlook  upon  the  fu- 
ture, that  we  have  never  yet  produced  evidence  of 
any  general  disposition  at  any  time  to  straighten 
out  or  even  suspend  these  fumbling  intricacies  and 
ineptitudes.  Never  so  far  has  there  appeared  in 
British  affairs  that  divine  passion  to  do  things  in 
the  clearest,  cleanest,  least  wasteful,  most  thorough 
manner,  that  is  needed  to  straighten  out  for  example 
these  universal  local  tangles.  Always  we  have  been 
content  with  the  old  intricate,  expensive  way,  and 
to  this  day  we  follow  it.  .  .  . 

And  what  I  want  to  know,  what  I  would  like  to 
feel  much  surer  about  than  I  do,  is,  is  this  in  our 
blood?  Or  is  it  only  the  deep-seated  habit  of  long 
ages  of  security,  long  years  of  margins  so  ample, 
that  no  waste  seemed  altogether  wicked.  Is  it,  in 
fact,  a  hopeless  and  ineradicable  trait,  that  we  stick 
to  extravagance  and  confusion? 

What  I  would  like  to  think  possible  at  the  pres- 
ent time,  up  and  down  the  scale  from  parish  to 
province,  is  something  of  this  sort.  Suppose  the 
clerk  of  Braintree  went  to  the  clerk  of  Bocking  and 
said :  "  Look  here,  one  of  us  could  do  the  work  of 
both  of  us,  as  well  or  better.     The  easy  times  are 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD    85 

over,  and  offices  as  well  as  men  should  be  prepared 
to  die  for  their  country.  Shall  we  toss  to  see  who 
shall  do  it,  and  let  the  other  man  go  off  to  find 
something  useful  to  do?''  Then  I  could  believe.* 
Suppose  the  people  of  Braintree  and  Bocking,  not 
waiting  for  that  lead,  said ;  "  But  this  is  absurd ! 
Let  us  have  an  identical  council  and  one  clerk  and 
get  ahead,  instead  of  keeping  up  this  silly  pretence 
that  one  town  is  two."  Suppose  some  one  of  that 
300,000  pounds'  Tvorth  of  gentlemen  at  the  Local 
Government  Board  set  to  work  to  replan  our  local 
government  areas  generally  on  less  comic  lines. 
Suppose  his  official  superiors  helped  instead  of  snub- 
bing him.  .  .  . 

I  see  nothing  of  the  sort  happening.  I  see  every- 
where, wary  watchful  little  men,  thinking  of  them- 
selves, thinking  of  their  parish,  thinking  close,  hold- 
ing tight.  .  .  . 

I  know  that  there  is  a  whole  web  of  excuses  for 
all  these  complicated,  wasteful,  and  obstructive  ar- 

*  Such  acts  of  virtue  happen  in  the  United  States.  Here  is 
a  quotation  from  the  New  York  World  of  February  15th,  1916 : 

"  For  two  unusual  acts  Henry  Bruere  may  be  remembered 
by  New  York  longer  than  nine  days.  Early  in  his  incumbency 
ho  declared  that  his  office  was  superfluous  and  should  be  abol- 
ished, the  Comptroller  assuming  its  duties.  He  now  abolishes 
by  resignation  his  own  connection  with  it,  in  spite  of  its  $12,000 
salary." 


86  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

rangements  of  our  local  government,  these  arrange- 
ments that  I  have  taken  merely  as  a  sample  of  the 
general  human  way  of  getting  affairs  done.  For  it 
is  affairs  at  large  I  am  writing  about,  as  I  warned 
the  reader  at  the  beginning.  Directly  one  enquires 
closely  into  any  human  muddle,  one  finds  all  sorts 
of  reasonable  rights  and  objections  and  claims  bar- 
ring the  way  to  any  sweeping  proposals.  I  can 
quite  imagine  that  Bocking  has  admirable  reasons 
for  refusing  coalescence  with  Brain  tree,  except  upon 
terms  that  Braintree  could  not  possibly  consider. 
I  can  quite  understand  that  there  are  many  incon- 
veniences and  arguable  injustices  that  would  be 
caused  by  a  merger  of  the  two  areas.  I  have  no 
doubt  it  would  mean  serious  loss  to  So-and-so,  and 
quite  novel  and  unfair  advantage  to  So-and-so.  It 
would  take  years  to  work  the  thing  and  get  down 
to  the  footing  of  one  water  supply  and  an  ambidex- 
trous dustman  on  the  lines  of  perfect  justice  and 
satisfactoriness  all  round.  But  what  I  want  to 
maintain  is  that  these  little  immediate  claims  and 
rights  and  vested  interests  and  bits  of  justice  and 
fairness  are  no  excuse  at  all  for  preventing  things 
being  done  in  the  clear,  clean,  large,  quick  way. 
They  never  constituted  a  decent  excuse,  and  now 
they  excuse  waste  and  delay  and  inconvenience  less 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD         87 

than  ever.  Let  us  first  do  things  in  the  sound  way, 
and  then,  if  we  can,  let  us  pet  and  compensate  any 
disappointed  person  who  used  to  profit  by  their  be- 
ing done  roundabout  instead  of  earning  an  honest 
living.  We  are  beginning  to  agree  that  reasonably 
any  man  may  be  asked  to  die  for  his  country ;  what 
we  have  to  recognise  is  that  any  man's  proprietor- 
ship, interest,  claims  or  rights  may  just  as  properly 
be  called  upon  to  die.  Bocking  and  Braintree  and 
Mr.  John  Smith  —  Mr.  John  Smith,  the  ordinary 
comfortable  man  with  a  stake  in  the  country  — 
have  been  thinking  altogether  too  much  of  the 
claims  and  rights  and  expectations  and  economies 
of  Bocking  and  Braintree  and  Mr.  John  Smith. 
They  have  to  think  now  in  a  different  way.  .  .  . 

Just  consider  the  work  of  reconstruction  that 
Great  Britain  alone  will  have  to  face  in  the  next 
year  or  so.  (And  her  task  is  if  anything  less  than 
that  of  any  of  her  antagonists  or  Allies,  except 
Japan  and  Italy. )  She  has  now  probably  from  six 
to  ten  million  people  in  the  British  Isles,  men  and 
women,  either  engaged  directly  in  warfare  or  in  the 
manufacture  of  munitions  or  in  employments  such 
as  transit,  nursing,  and  so  forth,  directly  subserving 
these  main  ends.  At  least  five-sixths  of  these  mil- 
lions must  be  got  back  to  employment  of  a  different 


88  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

character  within  a  year  of  the  coming  of  peace. 
Everywhere  manufacture,  trade,  and  transit  has 
been  disorganised,  disturbed,  or  destroyed.  A  new 
economic  system  has  to  be  put  together  within  a 
brief  score  or  so  of  weeks ;  great  dislocated  masses 
of  population  have  to  be  fed,  kept  busy  and  dis- 
tributed in  a  world  financially  strained  and  abound- 
ing in  wounded,  cripples,  widows,  orphans  and  help- 
less people.  In  the  next  year  or  so  the  lives  of  half 
the  population  will  have  to  be  fundamentally  read- 
justed. Here  is  work  for  administrative  giants, 
work  for  which  no  powers  can  be  excessive.  It  will 
be  a  task  quite  difficult  enough  to  do  even  without 
the  opposition  of  legal  rights,  haggling  owners,  and 
dexterous  profiteers.  It  would  be  a  giant's  task  if 
all  the  necessary  administrative  machinery  existed 
now  in  the  most  perfect  condition.  How  is  this 
tremendous  job  going  to  be  done  if  every  Bocking 
in  the  country  is  holding  out  for  impossible  terms 
from  Brain  tree,  and  every  Braintree  holding  out  for 
impossible  terms  from  Bocking,  while  the  road  out 
remains  choked  and  confused  between  them ;  and  if 
every  John  Smith  with  a  claim  is  insisting  upon 
his  reasonable  expectation  of  profits  or  dividends, 
his  reasonable  solatium  and  compensation  for  get- 
ting out  of  the  way?     I  would  like  to  record  my 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD    89 

conviction  that  if  the  business  of  this  great  crisis  is 
to  be  done  in  the  same  spirit,  the  jealous,  higgling, 
legal  spirit  that  I  have  seen  prevailing  in  British 
life  throughout  my  half  century  of  existence,  it  will 
not  in  any  satisfactory  sense  of  the  phrase  get  done 
at  all.  This  war  has  greatly  demoralised  and  dis- 
credited the  governing  class  in  Great  Britain,  and 
if  big  masses  of  unemployed  and  unfed  people,  no 
longer  strung  up  by  the  actuality  of  war,  masses 
now  trained  to  arms  and  with  many  quite  sympa- 
thetic oflQcers  available,  are  released  clumsily  and 
planlessly  into  a  world  of  risen  prices  and  rising 
rents,  of  legal  obstacles  and  forensic  complications, 
of  greedy  speculators  and  hampered  enterprises, 
there  will  be  insurrection  and  revolution.  There 
will  be  bloodshed  in  the  streets  and  the  chasing  of 
rulers. 

There  icill  be,  if  we  do  seriously  attempt  to  put 
the  new  wine  of  humanity,  the  new  crude  fermenta- 
tions at  once  so  hopeful  and  so  threatening,  that  the 
war  has  released,  into  the  old  administrative  bot- 
tles that  served  our  purposes  before  the  war. 

I  believe  that  for  old  lawyers  and  old  politicians 
and  "  private  ownership  "  to  handle  the  great  prob- 
lem of  reconstruction  after  the  war  in  the  spirit  in 
which  our  affairs  were  conducted  before  the  war,  is 


90  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

about  as  hopeful  an  enterprise  as  if  an  elderly  job- 
bing bricklayer,  working  on  strict  trade-union  rules, 
set  out  to  stop  the  biggest  avalanche  that  ever  came 
down  a  mountain  side.  And  since  I  am  by  no  means 
altogether  pessimistic,  in  spite  of  my  qualmy  phases, 
it  follows  that  I  do  not  believe  that  the  old  spirit 
will  necessarily  prevail.  I  do  not,  because  I  be- 
lieve that  in  the  past  few  decades  a  new  spirit  has 
come  into  human  affairs ;  that  our  ostensible  rulers 
and  leaders  have  been  falling  behind  the  times,  and 
that  in  the  young  and  the  untried,  in,  for  example, 
the  young  European  of  thirty  and  under,  who  is  now 
in  such  multitudes  thinking  over  life,  and  his  se- 
niors in  the  trenches,  there  are  still  unsuspected  re- 
sources of  will  and  capacity,  new  mental  possibili- 
ties and  new  mental  habits,  that  entirely  disturb  the 
argument  —  based  on  the  typical  case  of  Bocking  and 
Braintree  —  for  a  social  catastrophe  after  the  war. 

How  best  can  this  new  spirit  be  defined? 

It  is  the  creative  spirit  as  distinguished  from  the 
legal  spirit ;  it  is  the  spirit  of  courage  to  make  and 
not  the  spirit  that  waits  and  sees  and  claims ;  it  is 
the  spirit  that  looks  to  the  future  and  not  to  the 
past.  It  is  the  spirit  that  makes  Bocking  forget 
that  it  is  not  Braintree  and  John  Smith  forget  that 
he  is  John  Smith,  and  both  remember  that  they  are 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD  91 

England.  For  every  one  there  are  two  diametri- 
cally different  ways  of  thinking  about  life ;  there  is 
individualism,  the  way  that  comes  as  naturally  as 
the  grunt  from  a  pig,  of  thinking  outwardly  from 
oneself  as  the  centre  of  the  universe,  and  there  is 
the  way  that  every  religion  is  trying  in  some  form 
to  teach,  of  thinking  back  to  oneself  from  greater 
standards  and  realities.  There  is  the  Braintree 
that  is  Braintree  against  England  and  the  world, 
giving  as  little  as  possible  and  getting  the  best  of 
the  bargain,  and  there  is  the  Braintree  that  identi- 
fies itself  with  England  and  asks  how  can  we  do 
best  for  the  world  with  this  little  place  of  ours,  how 
can  we  educate  best,  produce  most,  and  make  our 
roads  straight  and  good  for  the  world  to  go  through. 
Every  American  knows  the  district  that  sends  its 
congressman  to  Washington  for  the  good  of  his  dis- 
trict, and  the  district,  the  rarer  district,  that  sends 
a  man  to  work  for  the  United  States.  There  is  the 
John  Smith  who  feels  toward  England  and  the 
world  as  a  mite  feels  toward  its  cheese,  and  the  John 
Smith  who  feels  toward  his  country  as  a  sheep-dog 
feels  toward  the  flock.  The  former  is  the  spirit  of 
individualism,  "  business,''  and  our  law,  the  latter 
the  spirit  of  socialism  and  science  and  —  khaki. 
.  .  .  They  are  both  in  all  of  us,  they  fluctuate  from 


92  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

day  to  day;  first  one  is  ascendent  and  then  the 
other.  War  does  not  so  much  tilt  the  balance  as 
accentuate  the  difference.  One  rich  British  land- 
owner sneaks  off  to  New  York  State  to  set  up  a 
home  there  and  evade  taxation;  another  turns  his 
mansion  into  a  hospital  and  goes  off  to  help  Serbian 
refugees.  Acts  of  baseness  or  generosity  are  con- 
tagious; this  man  will  give  himself  altogether  be- 
cause of  a  story  of  devotion,  this  man  declares  he 
will  do  nothing  until  Sir  F.  E.  Smith  goes  to  the 
front.  And  the  would-be  prophet  of  what  is  going 
to  happen  must  guess  the  relative  force  of  these 
most  impalpable  and  uncertain  things. 

This  Braintree-Bocking  boundary  which  runs 
down  the  middle  of  the  road  is  to  be  found  all  over 
the  world.  You  will  find  it  in  Ireland  and  the 
gentlemen  who  trade  on  the  jealousies  of  the  north 
side  and  the  gentlemen  who  trade  on  the  jealousies 
of  the  south.  You  will  find  it  in  England  among 
the  good  people  who  would  rather  wreck  the  Em- 
pire than  work  honestly  and  fairly  with  Labour. 
There  are  not  only  parish  boundaries  but  park 
boundaries  and  class  and  sect  boundaries.  You 
wdll  find  the  Bocking-Braintree  line  too  at  a  dozen 
points  on  a  small  scale  map  of  Europe.  .  .  .  These 
Braintree-Bocking  lines  are  the  barbed  wire  en- 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD    93 

tanglements  between  us  and  the  peace  of  the  world. 
Against  these  entanglements  in  every  country  the 
new  spirit  struggles  in  many  thousands  of  minds. 
Where  wall  it  be  strongest?  Which  country  will  get 
clear  first,  get  most  rapidly  to  work  again,  have  least 
of  the  confusion  and  wrangling  that  must  in  some 
degree  occur  everywhere?  Will  any  country  go  al- 
together to  pieces  in  hopeless  incurable  discord? 

Now  I  believe  that  the  answer  to  that  last  ques- 
tion is  "  No."  And  my  reason  for  that  answer  is 
the  same  as  my  reason  for  believing  that  the  asso- 
ciation of  the  Pledged  Allies  will  not  break  up  after 
the  war ;  it  is  that  I  believe  that  this  war  is  going 
to  end  not  in  the  complete  smashing  up  and  sub- 
jugation of  either  side,  but  in  a  general  exhaustion 
that  will  make  the  recrudescence  of  the  war  still 
possible  but  very  terrifying. 

Mars  will  sit  like  a  giant  above  all  human  affairs 
for  the  next  two  decades  and  the  speech  of  Mars  is 
blunt  and  plain.  He  will  say  to  us  all :  "  Get  your 
houses  in  order.  If  you  squabble  among  yourselves, 
waste  time,  litigate,  muddle,  snatch  profits  and 
shirk  obligations,  I  will  certainly  come  down  upon 
you  again.  I  have  taken  all  your  men  between 
eighteen  and  fifty,  and  killed  and  maimed  such  as  I 
pleased ;  millions  of  them.     I  have  wasted  your  sub- 


94  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

stance  —  contemptuously.  Now,  mark  you,  you 
have  multitudes  of  male  children  between  the  ages 
of  nine  and  nineteen  running  about  among  you. 
Delightful  and  beloved  boys.  And  behind  them 
come  millions  of  delightful  babies.  Of  these  I  have 
scarcely  smashed  and  starved  a  paltry  hundred 
thousand  perhaps  by  the  way.  But  go  on  mud- 
dling, each  for  himself  and  his  parish  and  his  family 
and  none  for  all  the  world,  go  on  in  the  old  way, 
stick  to  your  ^  rights,'  stick  to  your  ^  claims,'  each 
one  of  you,  make  no  concessions  and  no  sacrifices, 
obstruct,  waste,  squabble,  and  presently  I  will  come 
back  again  and  take  all  that  fresh  harvest  of  life  I 
have  spared,  all  those  millions  that  are  now  sweet 
children  and  dear  little  boys  and  youths,  and  I  will 
squeeze  it  into  red  pulp  between  my  hands,  I  will 
mix  it  with  the  mud  of  trenches  and  feast  on  it  be- 
fore your  eyes,  even  more  damnably  than  I  have 
done  with  your  grown-up  sons  and  young  men. 
And  I  have  taken  most  of  your  superfluities  al- 
ready; next  time  I  will  take  your  barest  necessi- 
ties." 

So  —  the  red  god,  Mars ;  and  in  these  days  of  uni- 
versal education  the  great  mass  of  people  will  un- 
derstand plainly  now  that  that  is  his  message  and 
intention.     Men  who  cannot  be  swayed  by  the  love 


THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  WORLD    95 

of  order  and  creation  may  be  swayed  by  the  thought 
of  death  and  destruction.  .  .  .  There,  I  think,  is  the 
overriding  argument  that  will  burst  the  proprietor- 
ships and  divisions  and  boundaries,  the  web  of  in- 
effectiveness that  has  held  the  world  so  long. 
Labour  returning  from  the  trenches  to  its  country 
and  demanding  promptness,  planning,  generous  and 
devoted  leaderships  and  organisation,  demanding 
that  the  usurer  and  financier,  the  landlord  and  law- 
yer shall,  if  need  be,  get  themselves  altogether  out 
of  the  way,  will  have  behind  its  arguments  the 
thought  of  the  enemy  still  unsubdued,  still  formid- 
able, recovering.  Both  sides  will  feel  that.  This 
world  is  a  more  illuminated  world  than  in  1816 ;  a 
thousand  questions  between  law  and  duty  have  been 
discussed  since  then;  beyond  all  comparison  we 
know  better  what  we  are  doing.  I  think  the  broad 
side  of  John  Smith  ( and  Sir  John  Smith  and  John 
Smith,  K.  C.)  will  get  the  better  of  his  narrow 
ends  —  and  that  so  it  will  be  with  Jean  Dupont  and 
Hans  Meyer  and  the  rest  of  them.  There  may  be 
riots  here  and  there ;  there  may  be  some  pretty  con- 
siderable rows ;  but  I  do  not  think  there  is  going  to 
be  a  chaotic  and  merely  destructive  phase  in  Great 
Britain  or  any  Western  European  country.  I  cast 
my  guess  for  reconstruction  and  not  for  revolt. 


HOW  FAR  WILL  EUROPE  GO  TOWARDS 
SOCIALISM? 

A  NUMBER  of  people  are  saying  that  this  war  is  to 
be  the  end  of  Individualism.  "  Go  as  you  please  ^' 
has  had  its  death-blow.  Out  of  this  war,  whatever 
else  emerges,  there  will  emerge  a  more  highly  organ- 
ised State  than  existed  before  —  that  is  to  say,  a 
less  individualistic  and  more  socialistic  State. 
And  there  seems  a  heavy  weight  of  probability  on 
the  side  of  this  view.  But  there  are  also  a  number 
of  less  obvious  countervailing  considerations  that 
may  quite  possibly  modify  or  reverse  this  tendency. 
In  .this  chapter  an  attempt  is  to  be  made  to  strike  a 
balance  between  the  two  systems  of  forces,  and  guess 
how  much  will  be  private  and  how  much  public  in 
Europe  in  1930,  or  thereabouts. 

The  prophets  who  foretell  the  coming  of  Social- 
ism base  their  case  on  three  sets  of  arguments. 
They  point  out,  first,  the  failure  of  individual  enter- 
prise to  produce  a  national  efficiency  comparable  to 
the  partial  State  Socialism  of  Germany,  and  the  ex- 
traordinary  special   dangers   inherent   in   private 

96 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  97 

property  that  the  war  has  brought  to  light;  sec- 
ondly, to  the  scores  of  approaches  to  practical 
Socialism  that  have  been  forced  upon  Great  Britain 
—  for  example,  by  the  needs  of  the  war;  and, 
thirdly,  to  the  obvious  necessities  that  will  confront 
the  British  Empire  and  the  Allies  generally  after 
the  war  —  necessities  that  no  unorganised  private 
effort  can  meet.  All  these  arguments  involve  the 
assumption  that  the  general  understanding  of  the 
common  interest  will  be  sufficient  to  override  indi- 
vidual and  class  motives;  an  exceedingly  doubtful 
assumption,  to  say  the  least  of  it.  But  the  general 
understanding  of  the  common  interest  is  most  likely 
to  be  kept  alive  by  the  sense  of  a  common  danger, 
and  we  have  already  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that 
Germany  is  going  to  be  defeated  but  not  destroyed 
in  this  war,  and  that  she  w^ill  be  left  with  sufficient 
vitality  and  sufficient  resentment  and  sufficient  of 
her  rancid  cultivated  nationalism  to  make  not  only 
the  continuance  of  the  Alliance  after  the  war  obvi- 
ously advisable  and  highly  probable,  but  also  to 
preserve  in  the  general  mind  for  a  generation  or  so 
that  sense  of  a  common  danger  which  most  effect- 
ually conduces  to  the  sweeping  aside  of  merely  per- 
sonal and  wasteful  claims.  Into  the  consequences 
of  this  we  have  now  to  look  a  little  more  closely. 


98  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

It  was  the  weaknesses  of  Germany  that  made  this 
war,  and  not  her  strength.  The  weaknesses  of  Ger- 
many are  her  Imperialism,  her  Junkerism,  and  her 
intense  sentimental  Nationalism;  for  the  former 
would  have  no  German  ascendency  that  was  not 
achieved  by  force,  and,  with  the  latter,  made  the 
idea  of  German  ascendency  intolerable  to  all  man- 
kind. Better  death,  we  said.  And  had  Germany 
been  no  more  than  her  Court,  her  Junkerism,  her 
Nationalism,  the  whole  system  would  have  smashed 
beneath  the  contempt  and  indignation  of  the  world 
within  a  year. 

But  the  strength  of  Germany  has  saved  her  from 
that  destruction.  She  was  at  once  the  most  archaic 
and  modern  of  states.  She  was  Hohenzollern, 
claiming  to  be  Caesar,  and  flaunting  a  flat  black 
eagle  borrowed  from  Imperial  Rome;  and  also  she 
was  the  most  scientilic  and  socialist  of  states.  It 
is  her  science  and  her  Socialism  that  have  held  and 
forced  back  the  avengers  of  Belgium  for  more  than 
a  year  and  a  half.  If  she  has  failed  as  a  conqueror, 
she  has  succeeded  as  an  organisation.  Her  ambi- 
tion has  been  thwarted,  and  her  method  has  been 
vindicated.  She  will,  I  think,  be  so  far  defeated  in 
the  contest  of  endurance  which  is  now  in  progress 
that  she  will  have  to  give  up  every  scrap  of  terri- 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  99 

torial  advantage  she  has  gained ;  she  may  lose  most 
of  her  Colonial  Empire ;  she  may  be  obliged  to  com- 
plete her  modernisation  by  abandoning  her  militant 
Imperialism;  but  she  will  have  at  least  the  satis- 
faction of  producing  far  profounder  changes  in  the 
chief  of  her  antagonists  than  those  she  herself  will 
undergo.  The  Germany  of  the  Hohenzollerns  had 
its  mortal  wound  at  the  Marne;  the  Germany  we 
fight  to-day  is  the  Germany  of  Krupp  and  Ostwald. 
It  is  merely  as  if  she  had  put  aside  a  mask  that  had 
blinded  her.  She  was  methodical  and  civilised  ex- 
cept for  her  head  and  aim ;  she  will  become  entirely 
methodical.  But  the  Britain  and  Russia  and 
France  she  fights  are  lands  full  of  the  spirit  of  un- 
defined novelty.  They  are  being  made  over  far 
more  completely.  They  are  being  made  over,  not 
in  spite  of  the  war,  but  because  of  the  war.  Only 
by  being  made  over  can  they  win  the  war.  And  if 
they  do  not  win  the  war,  then  they  are  bound  to  be 
made  over.  They  are  not  merely  putting  aside  old 
things,  but  they  are  forming  and  organising  within 
themselves  new  structures,  new  and  more  efficient 
relationships,  that  will  last  far  beyond  the  still  re- 
mote peace  settlement. 

What  this  war  has  brought  home  to  the  conscious- 
ness of  every  intelligent  man  outside  the  German 


100  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

system,  with  such  thoroughness  as  whole  genera- 
tions of  discussion  and  peace  experience  could  never 
have  achieved,  is  a  double  lesson :  that  Germany  had 
already  gone  far  to  master  when  she  blundered  into 
the  war;  firstly,  the  waste  and  dangers  of  individ- 
ualism, and,  secondly,  the  imperative  necessity  of 
scientific  method  in  public  affairs.  The  waste  and 
dangers  of  individualism  have  had  a  whole  series 
of  striking  exemplifications  both  in  Europe  and 
America  since  the  war  began.  Were  there  such  a 
thing  as  a  Socialist  j)ropaganda  in  existence,  were 
the  so-called  contemporary  socialistic  organisations 
anything  better  than  a  shabby  little  back-door  into 
contemporary  politics,  those  demonstrations  would 
be  hammering  at  the  mind  of  every  one.  It  may  be 
interesting  to  recapitulate  some  of  the  most  salient 
instances. 

The  best  illustration,  perhaps,  of  the  waste  that 
arises  out  of  individualism  is  to  be  found  in  the  ex- 
treme dislocation  of  the  privately  owned  transit 
services  of  Great  Britain  at  the  present  time. 
There  is  no  essential  reason  whatever  why  food  and 
fuel  in  Great  Britain  should  be  considerably  dearer 
than  they  are  under  peace  conditions.  Just  the 
same  home  areas  are  under  cultivation,  just  the 
same  foreign  resources  are  available;  indeed,  more 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  101 

foreign  supplies  are  available  because  we  have  inter- 
cepted those  that  under  normal  conditions  would 
have  gone  to  Germany.  The  submarine  blockade 
of  Britain  is  now  a  negligible  factor  in  this  question. 
Despite  these  patent  conditions  there  has  been, 
and  is,  a  steady  increase  in  the  cost  of  provisions, 
coal,  and  every  sort  of  necessity.  This  increase 
means  an  increase  in  the  cost  of  production  of  many 
commodities,  and  so  contributes  again  to  the  gen- 
eral scarcity.  This  is  the  domestic  aspect  of  a  diffi- 
culty that  has  also  its  military  side.  It  is  not  suffi- 
cient merely  to  make  munitions ;  they  must  also  be 
delivered.  Great  Britain  is  suffering  very  seri- 
ously from  congestion  of  the  railways.  She  suffers 
both  in  social  and  military  efficiency,  and  she  is  so 
suffering  because  her  railways,  instead  of  being 
planned  as  one  great  and  simple  national  distribut- 
ing system,  have  grown  up  under  conditions  of 
clumsy,  dividend-seeking  competition.  Each  great 
company  and  combination  has  worked  its  own 
areas,  and  made  difficulties  and  aggressions  at  the 
boundaries  of  its  sphere  of  influence;  here  are  in- 
convenient junctions  and  here  unnecessary  du- 
plications; nearly  all  the  companies  come  into 
London,  each  taking  up  its  own  area  of  expensive 
land  for  goods  yards,  sidings,  shunting  grounds,  and 


102  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

each  regardless  of  any  proper  correlation  with  the 
other ;  great  areas  of  the  County  of  London  are  cov- 
ered with  their  idle  trucks  and  their  separate  coal 
stores ;  in  many  provincial  towns  you  will  find  two 
or  even  three  railway  stations  at  opposite  ends  of 
the  town;  the  streets  are  blocked  by  the  vans  and 
trolleys  of  the  several  companies  tediously  handing 
about  goods  that  could  be  dealt  with  at  a  tenth  of 
the  cost  in  time  and  labour  at  a  central  clearing- 
house, did  such  a  thing  exist ;  and  each  system  has 
its  vast  separate  staff,  unaccustomed  to  work  with 
any  other  staff.  Since  the  war  began  the  Govern- 
ment has  taken  over  the  general  direction  of  this 
disarticulated  machinery,  but  no  one  with  eyes  who 
travels  about  England  now  can  fail  to  remark,  in 
the  miles  and  miles  of  waiting  loaded  trucks  on 
every  siding,  the  evidences  of  mischievous  and  now 
almost  insuperable  congestion.  The  trucks  of  each 
system  that  have  travelled  on  to  another,  still  go 
back  for  the  most  part  empty  to  their  own;  and 
thousands  of  privately  owned  trucks  which  carry 
cargo  only  one  way,  block  our  sidings.  Great  Brit- 
ain wastes  men  and  time  to  a  disastrous  extent  in 
these  needless  shuntings  and  handlings. 

Here,  touching  every  life  in  the  community,  is 
one  instance  of  the  muddle  that  arises  naturally  out 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  103 

of  the  individualistic  method  of  letting  public  serv- 
ices grow  up  anyhow  without  a  plan,  or  without  any 
direction  at  all  except  the  research  for  private 
profit. 

A  second  series  of  deficiencies  that  the  war  has 
brought  to  light  in  the  too  individualistic  Brit- 
ish State  is  the  entire  want  of  connection  between 
private  profit  and  public  welfare.  So  far  as  the 
interests  of  the  capitalist  go  it  does  not  matter 
whether  he  invests  his  money  at  home  or  abroad; 
it  does  not  matter  whether  his  goods  are  manufac- 
tured in  London  or  Timbuctoo. 

But  what  of  the  result?  At  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  Great  Britain  found  that  a  score  of  necessary 
industries  had  drifted  out  of  the  country,  because 
it  did  not  "  pay  "  any  private  person  to  keep  them 
here.  The  shortage  of  dyes  has  been  amply  dis- 
cussed as  a  typical  case.  A  much  graver  one  that 
we  may  now  write  about  was  the  shortage  of 
zinc.  Within  a  month  or  so  of  the  outbreak  of 
the  war  the  British  Government  had  to  take  urgent 
and  energetic  steps  to  secure  this  essential  ingredi- 
ent of  cartridge  cases.  Individualism  had  let  zinc 
refining  drift  to  Belgium  and  Germany ;  it  was  the 
luck  rather  than  the  merit  of  Great  Britain  that 
one  or  two  refineries  still  existed.     And  still  more 


104  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

extraordinary  things  came  to  light  in  the  matter 
of  the  metal  supply.  Under  an  individualistic  sys- 
tem you  may  sell  to  the  highest  bidder,  and  any  one 
with  money  from  anywhere  may  come  in  and  buy. 
Great  supplies  of  colonial  ores  were  found  to  be 
cornered  by  semi-national  German  syndicates. 
Supplies  were  held  up  by  these  contracts  against 
the  necessities  of  the  Empire.  And  this  was  but 
one  instance  of  many  which  have  shown  that,  while 
industrial  development  in  the  Allied  countries  is 
still  largely  a  squabbling  confusion  of  little  short- 
sighted, unscientific,  private  profit-seeking  owners, 
in  Germany  it  has  been  for  some  years  increasingly 
run  on  far-seeing  collectivist  lines.  Against  the 
comparatively  little  and  mutually  jealous  British 
or  American  capitalists  and  millionaires,  Germany 
pits  itself  as  a  single  great  capitalist  and  competi- 
tor. She  has  worked  everywhere  upon  a  compre- 
hensive plan.  Against  her  great  national  electric 
combination,  for  example,  only  another  national 
combination  could  stand.  As  it  was,  Germany  — 
in  the  way  of  business  —  wired  and  lit  ( and  exam- 
ined) the  forts  at  Liege.  She  bought  and  prepared 
a  hundred  strategic  centres  in  individualistic  Bel- 
gium and  France. 

So  we  pass  from  the  fact  that  individualism  is 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  105 

hopeless  muddle  to  the  fact  that  the  individualist 
idea  is  one  of  limitless  venality.  Who  can  buy, 
may  control.  And  Germany,  in  her  long  scheming 
against  her  individualist  rivals,  has  not  simply  set 
herself  to  buy  and  hold  the  keys  and  axles  of  their 
economic  machinery.  She  has  set  herself,  it  must 
be  admitted,  with  a  certain  crudity  and  little  suc- 
cess, but  with  unexampled  vigour,  to  buy  the  minds 
of  her  adversaries.  The  Western  nations  have 
taken  a  peculiar  pride  in  having  a  free  Press ;  that 
is  to  say,  a  Press  that  may  be  bought  by  any  one. 
Our  Press  is  constantly  bought  and  sold,  in  gross 
and  detail,  by  financiers,  advertisers,  political  par- 
ties, and  the  like.  Germany  came  into  the  market 
rather  noisily,  and  great  papers  do  to  a  large  ex- 
tent live  in  glass  houses ;  but  her  efforts  have  been 
sufficient  to  exercise  the  minds  of  great  numbers 
of  men  with  the  problem  of  what  might  have  hap- 
pened in  the  way  of  national  confusion  if  the  Ger- 
man attack  had  been  more  subtly  conceived.  .  .  . 
It  is  only  a  partial  answer  to  this  difficulty  to 
say  that  a  country  that  is  so  nationalist  and  aggres- 
sive as  Germany  is  incapable  of  subtle  conceptions. 
The  fact  remains  that  in  Great  Britain  at  the  pres- 
ent time  there  are  newspaper  proprietors  who  would 
be   good  bargains   for   Germany   at   two   million 


106  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

pounds  a  head,  and  that  there  was  no  effectual 
guarantee  in  the  individualistic  system,  but  only 
our  good  luck  and  the  natural  patriotism  of  the 
individuals  concerned  that  she  did  not  pick  up  these 
bargains  before  trading  with  the  enemy  became 
illegal.  It  happened,  for  example,  that  Lord 
Northcliffe  was  public-spirited.  That  was  the  good 
luck  of  Great  Britain  rather  than  her  merit.  There 
was  nothing  in  the  individualistic  system  to  pre- 
vent Germany  from  buying  up  the  entire  Harms- 
worth  Press  —  The  Times,  Daily  Mail,  and  all  — 
five  years  before  the  war,  and  using  it  to  confuse 
the  national  mind,  destroy  the  national  unity,  sacri- 
fice the  national  interests,  and  frustrate  the  na- 
tional will.  Not  only  the  newspapers,  but  the 
newsagents  and  booksellers  of  both  Great  Britain 
and  America  are  entirely  at  the  disposal  of  any 
hostile  power  which  chooses  to  buy  them  up  quietly 
and  systematically.  It  is  merely  a  question  of 
wealth  and  cleverness.  And  if  the  failure  of  the 
Germans  to  grip  the  press  of  the  French  and  Eng- 
lish speaking  countries  has  been  conspicuous,  she 
has  been  by  no  means  so  unsuccessful  in  —  for  ex- 
ample —  Spain.  At  the  present  time  the  thought 
and  feeling  of  the  Spanish  speaking  world  is  being 
educated  against  the  Allies.     The  Spanish  mind 


EUROPE  A:ND  socialism  107 

has  been  sold  by  its  custodians  into  German  control. 

Muddle  and  venality  do  not,  however,  exhaust 
the  demonstrated  vices  of  individualism.  Individ- 
ualism encourages  desertion  and  treason.  Individ- 
ualism permits  base  private  people  to  abscond  with 
the  national  resources  and  squeeze  a  profit  out  of 
national  suffering.  In  the  early  stages  of  the  war 
some  bright  minds  conceived  the  idea  of  a  corner  in 
drugs.  It  is  not  illegal ;  it  is  quite  the  sort  of  thing 
that  appeals  to  the  individualistic  frame  of  mind 
as  entirely  meritorious.  As  the  J^ew  Statesman 
put  it  recently :  "  The  happy  owners  of  the  world's 
available  stock  of  a  few  indispensable  drugs  did  not 
refrain  from  making,  not  only  the  various  Govern- 
ments, but  also  all  the  sick  people  of  the  world  pay 
double,  and  even  tenfold,  prices  for  what  was  es- 
sential to  relieve  pain  and  save  life.  What  for- 
tunes were  thus  made  we  shall  probably  never 
know,  any  more  than  we  shall  know  the  tale  of  the 
men  and  women  and  children  who  suffered  and  died 
because  of  their  inability  to  pay,  not  the  cost  of 
production  of  what  would  have  saved  them,  but  the 
unnecessarily  enhanced  price  that  the  chances  of 
the  market  enabled  the  owners  to  exact.'' 

And  another  bright  instance  of  the  value  of  in- 
dividualism is  the  selling  of  British  shipping  to 


108  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

neutral  buyers  just  when  the  country  is  in  the  most 
urgent  need  of  every  ship  it  can  get,  and  the  de- 
liberate transfer  to  America  of  a  number  of  British 
businesses  to  evade  paying  a  proper  share  of  the  na- 
tional bill  in  taxation.  The  English  who  have  gone 
to  America  at  different  times  have  been  of  very 
different  qualities;  at  the  head  of  the  list  are  the 
English  who  went  over  in  the  Mayflower ;  at  the 
bottom  will  be  rich  accessions  of  this  war.  .  .  .  And 
perhaps  a  still  more  impressive  testimony  to  the 
rottenness  of  these  "  business  men,"  upon  whom 
certain  eccentric  voices  call  so  amazingly  to  come 
and  govern  us,  is  the  incurable  distrust  they  have 
sown  in  the  minds  of  labour.  Never  was  an  at- 
mosphere of  discipline  more  lamentable  than  that 
which  has  grown  up  in  the  factories,  workshops, 
and  great  privately  owned  public  services  of  Amer- 
ica and  Western  Europe.  The  men,  it  is  evident, 
expect  to  be  robbed  and  cheated  at  every  turn.  I 
can  only  explain  their  state  of  mind  by  supposing 
that  they  have  been  robbed  and  cheated.  Their 
scorn  and  contempt  for  their  employers'  good  faith 
is  limitless.  Their  morale  is  undermined  by  an 
invincible  distrust.  It  is  no  good  for  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  to  attempt  to  cure  the  gathered  ill  of  a  cen- 
tury with  half  an  hour  or  so  of  eloquence.     When 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  109 

Great  Britain,  in  her  supreme  need,  turns  to  the 
workmen  she  has  trained  in  the  ways  of  individual- 
ism for  a  century,  she  reaps  the  harvest  individual- 
ism she  has  sown.  She  has  to  fight  with  that  handi- 
cap. Every  regulation  for  the  rapid  mobilisation 
of  labour  is  scrutinised  to  find  the  trick  in  it. 

And  they  find  the  trick  in  it  as  often  as  not. 
Smart  individualistic  "  business  experience  "  has 
been  at  the  draughtsman's  elbow.  A  man  in  an  in- 
dividualistic system  does  not  escape  from  class 
ideas  and  prejudices  by  becoming  an  official. 
There  is  profound  and  bitter  wisdom  in  the  deep 
distrust  felt  by  British  labour  for  both  military  and 
industrial  conscription. 

The  breakdown  of  individualism  has  been  so  com- 
plete in  Great  Britain  that  we  are  confronted  with 
the  spectacle  of  this  great  and  ancient  kingdom 
reconstructing  itself  perforce,  while  it  wages  the 
greatest  war  in  history.  A  temporary  nationalisa- 
tion of  land  transit  has  been  improvised,  and  only 
the  vast,  deep-rooted,  political  influence  of  the  ship- 
owners and  coalowners  has  staved  off  the  mani- 
festly necessary  step  of  nationalising  shipping  and 
coal.  I  doubt  if  they  will  be  able  to  stave  it  off  to 
the  end  of  the  long  struggle  which  is  still  before  us 
if  the  militarism  of  Germany  is  really  to  be  ar- 


110  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

rested  and  discredited.  Expropriation  and  not 
conscription  will  be  the  supreme  test  of  Britain's 
loyalty  to  her  Allies.  The  British  shipowners,  in 
particular,  are  reaping  enormous  but  precarious 
profits  from  the  war.  The  blockade  of  Britain  by 
the  British  shipowners  is  scarcely  less  effective  than 
the  blockade  of  Germany  by  Britain.  With  an  urg- 
ent need  of  every  ship  for  the  national  supplies, 
British  ships  at  the  present  moment  of  writing  this, 
are  still  carrying  cheap  American  automobiles  to 
Australia.  They  would  carry  munitions  to  Ger- 
many if  their  owners  thought  they  had  a  sporting 
chance  of  not  getting  caught  at  it.  These  British 
shipowners  are  a  pampered  class  with  great  politi- 
cal and  social  influence,  and  no  doubt  as  soon  as 
the  accumulating  strain  of  the  struggle  tells  to  the 
extent  of  any  serious  restriction  of  their  advantage 
and  prospects,  we  shall  see  them  shifting  to  the  side 
of  the  at  present  negligible  group  of  British  pacif- 
ists. I  do  not  think  one  can  count  on  any  limit  to 
their  selfishness  and  treason.  I  believe  that  the 
calculations  of  some  of  these  extreme  and  appar- 
ently quite  unreasonable  "  pacifists ''  are  right. 
Before  the  war  is  over  there  will  be  a  lot  of  money 
in  the  pacifist  business.  The  rich  curs  of  the  West 
End  will  join  hands  with  the  labour  curs  of  the 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  111 

Clyde.  The  base  are  to  be  found  in  all  classes,  but  I 
doubt  if  they  dominate  any.  But  I  do  not  believe 
that  any  interest  or  group  of  interests  in  Great 
Britain  can  stand  in  the  way  of  the  will  of  the 
whole  people  to  bring  this  struggle  to  a  triumphant 
finish  at  any  cost.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  most 
sacred  ties  of  personal  friendship  and  blood  rela- 
tionship with  influential  people  can  save  either 
shipowners  or  coalowners  or  army  contractors  to 
the  end.  There  will  be  no  end  until  these  profit- 
makings  are  arrested.  The  necessary  "  conscrip- 
tions of  property  "  must  come  about  in  Great  Brit- 
ain because  there  is  no  alternative  but  failure  in 
the  war,  and  the  British  people  will  not  stand  fail- 
ure. I  believe  that  the  end  of  the  war  will  see,  not 
only  transit,  but  shipping,  collieries,  and  large  por- 
tions of  the  machinery  of  food  and  drink  produc- 
tion and  distribution  no  longer  under  the  adminis- 
tration of  private  ownership,  but  under  a  sort  of 
provisional  public  administration.  And  a  very 
large  part  of  the  British  factories  will  be  in  the 
same  case.  Two  years  ago  no  one  would  have  dared 
to  prophesy  the  tremendous  rearrangement  of 
manufacturing  machinery  which  is  in  progress  in 
Britain  to-day.  Thousands  of  firms  of  engineers 
and  manufacturers  of  all  sorts,  which  were  flourish- 


112  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

ing  in  1914,  exist  to-day  only  as  names,  as  shapes,  as 
empty  shells.  Their  staffs  have  been  shattered, 
scattered,  reconstructed;  their  buildings  enlarged 
and  modified;  their  machinery  exchanged,  recon- 
stituted, or  taken.  The  reality  is  a  vast  interde- 
pendent national  factory  that  would  have  seemed 
incredible  to  Fouriei. 

It  will  be  as  impossible  to  put  back  British  in- 
dustrialism into  the  factories  and  forms  of  the  pre- 
war era  as  it  would  be  to  restore  the  Carthaginian 
Empire.  There  is  a  new  economic  Great  Britain 
to-day,  emergency  made,  jerry-built  no  doubt,  a 
gawky,  weedy  giant,  but  a  giant  who  may  fill  out  to 
such  dimensions  as  the  German  national  system  has 
never  attained.  Behind  it  is  an  idea^  a  new  idea, 
the  idea  of  the  nation  as  one  great  economic  system 
working  together,  an  idea  which  could  not  possibly 
have  got  into  the  sluggish  and  conservative  British 
intelligence  in  half  a  century  by  any  other  means 
than  the  stark  necessities  of  this  war.  .  .  .  Great 
Britain  cannot  retrace  those  steps  even  if  she 
would,  and  so  she  will  be  forced  to  carry  this  proc- 
ess of  reconstruction  through.  And  what  is  hap- 
pening to  Great  Britain  must,  with  its  national  dif- 
ferences, be  happening  to  France  and  Russia.  Not 
only  for  war  ends,  but  for  peace  ends,  behind  the 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  113 

front  and  sustaining  the  front,  individualities  are 
being  hammered  together  into  common  and  con- 
certed activities. 

At  the  end  of  this  war  Great  Britain  will  find  her- 
self with  this  great  national  factory,  this  great  na- 
tional organisation  of  labour,  planned,  indeed,  pri- 
marily to  make  war  material,  but  convertible 
with  the  utmost  ease  to  the  purposes  of  automobile 
manufacture,  to  transit  reconstruction,  to  electrical 
engineering,  and  endless  such  uses.  France  and 
Russia  will  be  in  a  parallel  case.  All  the  world 
will  be  exhausted,  and  none  of  the  Allies  will  have 
much  money  to  import  automobiles,  railway  ma- 
terial, electrical  gear,  and  so  on,  from  abroad. 
Moreover,  it  will  be  a  matter*of  imperative  necessity 
for  them  to  get  ahead  of  the  Central  Powers  with 
their  productive  activities.  We  shall  all  be  too 
poor  to  import  from  America,  and  we  shall  be  in- 
sane to  import  from  Germany.  America  will  be 
the  continent  with  the  long  purse,  prepared  to  buy 
rather  than  sell.  Each  country  will  have  great 
masses  of  soldiers  waiting  to  return  to  industrial 
life,  and  will  therefore  be  extremely  indisposed 
to  break  up  any  existing  productive  organisation. 
In  the  face  of  these  facts,  will  any  of  the  Allied 
Powers  be  so  foolish  as  to  disband  this  great  system 


114  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

of  national  factories  and  nationally  worked  com- 
munications? Moreover,  we  have  already  risked 
the  prophecy  that  this  war  will  not  end  with  such 
conclusiveness  as  to  justify  an  immediate  beating 
out  of  our  swords  into  ploughshares.  There  will 
be  a  military  as  well  as  a  social  reason  for  keeping 
the  national  factories  in  a  going  state.  What  more 
obvious  course,  then,  than  to  keep  them  going  by 
turning  them  on  to  manufacture  goods  of  urgent 
public  necessity?  There  are  a  number  of  modern 
commodities  now  practically  standardised:  the 
bicycle,  the  cheap  watch,  the  ordinary  tradesman's 
delivery  automobile,  the  farmer's  runabout,  the 
country  doctor's  car,  much  electric  lighting  ma- 
terial, dynamos,  and  so  forth.  And  also,  in  a 
parallel  case,  there  is  shipbuilding.  The  chemical 
side  of  munition  work  can  turn  itself  with  no  ex- 
treme difficulty  to  the  making  of  such  products  as 
dyes. 

We  face  the  fact,  then,  that  either  the  State  must 
go  on  with  this  production,  as  it  can  do,  straight 
off  from  the  signing  of  peace,  converting  with  a 
minimum  of  friction,  taking  on  its  soldiers  as  they 
are  discharged  from  the  army  as  employes  with  a 
minimum  waste  of  time  and  a  minimum  of  social 
disorder  and  a  maximum  advantage  in  the  resump- 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  115 

tion  of  foreign  trade,  or  there  will  be  a  dangerous 
break-up  of  the  national  factory  system,  a  time  of 
extreme  chaos  and  bitter  unemployment  until  cap- 
ital accumulates  for  new  developments.  The  risks 
of  social  convulsion  will  be  enormous.  And  there 
is  small  hope  that  the  Central  Powers,  and  par- 
ticularly industrial  Germany,  will  have  the  polite- 
ness to  wait  through  the  ten  or  twelve  years  of 
economic  embarrassment  that  a  refusal  to  take  this 
bold  step  into  scientific  Socialism  will  entail. 

But  the  prophet  must  be  on  his  guard  against 
supposing  that,  because  a  thing  is  highly  desirable, 
it  must  necessarily  happen;  or  that,  because  it  is 
highly  dangerous,  it  will  be  avoided.  This  bold 
and  successful  economic  reconstruction  upon  na- 
tional lines  is  not  inevitable  merely  because  every 
sound  reason  points  us  in  that  direction.  A  man 
may  be  very  ill,  a  certain  drug  may  be  clearly  in- 
dicated as  the  only  possible  remedy,  but  it  does  not 
follow  that  the  drug  is  available,  that  the  doctor 
Avill  have  the  sense  to  prescribe  it,  or  the  patient 
the  means  to  procure  it  or  the  intelligence  to  swal- 
low it.  The  experience  of  history  is  that  nations 
do  not  take  the  obviously  right  course,  but  the  obvi- 
ously wrong  one.  The  present  prophet  knows  only 
his  England,  but,  so  far  as  England  is  concerned. 


116  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

he  can  cover  a  sheet  of  paper  with  scarcely  a  pause, 
jotting  down  memoranda  of  numberless  forces  that 
make  against  any  such  rational  reconstruction. 
Most  of  these  forces,  in  greater  or  less  proportion, 
must  be  present  in  the  case  of  every  other  country 
under  consideration. 

The  darkest  shadow  upon  the  outlook  of  Euro- 
pean civilisation  at  the  present  time  is  not  the  war ; 
it  is  the  failure  of  any  co-operative  spirit  between 
labour  and  the  directing  classes.  The  educated  and 
leisured  classes  have  been  rotten  with  individual- 
ism for  a  century;  they  have  destroyed  the  con- 
fidence of  the  worker  in  any  leadership  whatever. 
Labour  stands  apart,  intractable.  If  there  is  to  be 
any  such  rapid  conversion  of  the  economic  machin- 
ery as  the  opportunities  and  necessities  of  this  great 
time  demand,  then  labour  must  be  taken  into  the 
confidence  of  those  who  would  carry  it  through.  It 
must  be  reassured  and  enlightened.  Labour  must 
know  clearly  what  is  being  done ;  it  must  be  an  as- 
senting co-operator.  The  stride  to  economic  na- 
tional service  and  Socialism  is  a  stride  that  labour 
should  be  more  eager  to  take  than  any  other  section 
of  the  community.  And  the  first  step  in  reassuring 
labour  must  be  to  bring  the  greedy  private  owner 
and  the  speculator  under  a  far  more  drastic  dis- 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  117 

cipline  than  at  present.  The  property-owning  class 
is  continually  accusing  labour  of  being  ignorant, 
suspicious  and  difficult ;  it  is  blind  to  the  fact  that 
it  is  itself  profit-seeking  by  habit,  greedy,  conceited, 
and  half  educated.  Every  step  in  the  mobilisation 
of  Great  Britain's  vast  resources  for  the  purposes  of 
the  war  has  been  hampered  by  the  tricks,  the  fail- 
ures to  understand,  and  the  almost  instinctive  dis- 
loyalties of  private  owners.  The  raising  of  rents 
in  Glasgow  drove  the  infuriated  workmen  of  the 
Clyde  district  into  an  unwilling  strike.  It  was  an 
exasperating  piece  of  private  selfishness,  quite  typ- 
ical of  the  individualistic  state  of  mind,  and  the 
failure  to  anticipate  or  arrest  it  on  the  part  of  the 
Government  was  a  worse  failure  than  Suvla  Bay. 
And  everywhere  the  officials  of  the  Ministry  of 
Munitions  find  private  employers  holding  back 
workers  and  machinery  from  munition  works,  in- 
triguing —  more  particularly  through  the  Board  of 
Trade  —  to  have  all  sorts  of  manufactures  for 
private  profit  recognised  as  munition  work,  or  if 
that  contention  is  too  utterly  absurd,  then  as  work 
vitally  necessary  to  the  maintenance  of  British  ex- 
port trade  and  the  financial  position  of  the  country. 
It  is  an  undeniable  fact  that  employers  and  men 
alike  have  been  found  far  readier  to  risk  their  lives 


118  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

for  their  country  than  to  lay  aside  any  scale  of 
profits  to  which  they  have  grown  accustomed. 

This  conflict  of  individualistic  enterprise  and 
class  suspicion  against  the  synthesis  of  the  public 
welfare  is  not  peculiar  to  Great  Britain ;  it  is  prob- 
ably going  on  with  local  variations  in  Germany, 
Russia,  Italy,  France,  and,  indeed,  in  every  com- 
batant country.  Because  of  the  individualistic 
forces  and  feelings,  none  of  us,  either  friends  or 
enemies,  are  really  getting  anything  like  our  full 
possible  result  out  of  our  national  efforts.  But  in 
Germany  there  is  a  greater  tradition  of  subordina- 
tion; in  France  there  is  a  greater  clarity  of  mind 
than  in  any  other  country.  Great  Britain  and 
Russia  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  matters,  are  at 
once  close  kindred  and  sharp  antithesis.  Each  is 
mentally  crippled  by  the  corruption  of  its  educa- 
tional system  by  an  official  religious  orthodoxy, 
and  hampered  by  a  Court  which  disowns  any  func- 
tion of  intellectual  stimulus.  Neither  possesses  a 
scientifically  educated  class  to  which  it  can  look 
for  the  powerful  handling  of  this  great  occasion, 
and  each  has  acquired  under  these  disadvantages 
the  same  strange  faculty  for  producing  sane  result- 
ants out  of  illogical  confusions.     It  is  the  way  of 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  119 

these  unmethodical  Powers  to  produce  unexpected, 
vaguely  formulated,  and  yet  effective  cerebral  ac- 
tion —  apparently  from  their  backbones.  As  I  sit 
playing  at  prophecy,  and  turn  over  the  multitudin- 
ous impressions  of  the  last  year  in  my  mind,  weigh- 
ing the  great  necessities  of  the  time  against  ob- 
stacles and  petty-mindedness,  I  become  more  and 
more  conscious  of  a  third  factor  that  is  neither 
need  nor  obstruction,  and  that  is  the  will  to  get 
things  right  that  has  been  liberated  by  the  war. 
The  new  spirit  is  still  but  poorly  expressed,  but 
it  will  find  expression.  The  war  goes  on,  and  we 
discuss  this  question  of  economic  reconstruction 
as  though  it  was  an  issue  that  lay  between  the 
labour  that  has  stayed  behind  and  the  business  men, 
for  the  most  part  old  men  with  old  habits  of  mind, 
who  have  stayed  behind.  The  real  life  of  Europe's 
future  lies  on  neither  side  of  that  opposition.  The 
real  life  is  mutely  busy  at  present,  saying  little 
because  of  the  uproar  of  the  guns,  and  not  so  much 
learning  as  casting  habits  and  shedding  delusions. 
In  the  trenches  there  are  workers  who  have  broken 
with  the  old  slacking  and  sabotage,  and  there  are 
prospective  leaders  who  have  forgotten  profit.  The 
men  between  eighteen  and  forty  are  far  too  busy  in 


120  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

the  blood  and  mud  to  make  much  showing  now; 
but  to-morrow  these  men  will  be  the  nation. 

When  that  third  factor  of  the  problem  is  brought 
in  the  outlook  of  the  horoscope  improves.  The 
spirit  of  the  war  may  be  counted  upon  to  balance 
and  prevail  against  this  spirit  of  individualism, 
this  spirit  of  suspicion  and  disloyalty,  which  I  fear 
more  than  anything  else  in  the  world.  I  believe  in 
the  young  France,  young  England  and  young 
Russia  this  war  is  making,  and  so  I  believe  that 
every  European  country  will  struggle  along  the 
path  that  this  war  has  opened  to  a  far  more  com- 
pletely organised  State  than  has  existed  ever  be- 
fore. The  Allies  will  become  State  firms,  as  Ger- 
many was,  indeed,  already  becoming  before  the 
war ;  setting  private  profit  aside  in  the  common  in- 
terest, handling  agriculture,  transport,  shipping, 
coal,  the  supply  of  metals,  the  manufacture  of  a 
thousand  staple  articles,  as  national  concerns. 
And  in  the  face  of  the  manifest  determination  of 
the  Central  Powers  to  do  as  much,  the  Allies  will 
be  forced  also  to  link  their  various  State  firms  to- 
gether into  a  great  allied  trust,  trading  with  a  com- 
mon interest  and  a  common  plan  with  Germany  and 
America  and  the  rest  of  the  world.  .  .  .  Youth  and 
necessity  will  carry  this  against  selfishness,  against 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  121 

the  unimaginative,  against  the  unteachable,  the  sus- 
picious, the  ^^  old  fool/^ 

But  I  do  not  venture  to  prophesy  that  this  will 
come  about  as  if  it  were  a  slick  and  easy  deduction 
from  present  circumstances.  Even  in  France  I  do 
not  think  things  will  move  as  lucidly  and  gener- 
ously as  that.  There  will  be  a  conflict  everywhere 
between  wisdom  and  cunning,  between  the  eyes 
of  youth  and  the  purblind,  between  energy  and 
obstinacy.  The  reorganisation  of  the  European 
States  will  come  about  clumsily  and  ungraciously. 
At  every  point  the  sticker  will  be  found  sticking 
tight,  holding  out  to  be  bought  off,  holding  out  for  a 
rent  or  a  dividend  or  a  share,  holding  out  by  mere 
instinct.  At  every  turn,  too,  the  bawler  will  be 
loud  and  active,  bawling  suspicions,  bawling  ac- 
cusations, bawling  panic,  or  just  simply  bawling. 
Tricks,  peculation,  obstinacies,  vanities  —  after  this 
war  men  will  still  be  men.  But  I  do  believe  that 
through  all  the  dust  and  din,  the  great  reasons  in 
the  case,  the  steady  constructive  forces  of  the  situa- 
tion, will  carry  us.  I  believe  that  out  of  the  ruins 
of  the  nineteenth  century  system  of  private  capital- 
ism that  this  war  has  smashed  for  ever,  there  will 
arise,  there  does  even  now  arise,  in  this  strange 
scaffolding    of    national    munition    factories    and 


122  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

hastily  nationalised  public  services,  the  framework 
of  a  new  economic  and  social  order  based  upon  na- 
tional ownership  and  national  service. 

Let  us  now  recapitulate  a  little  and  see  how  far 
we  have  got  in  constructing  a  picture  of  the  Euro- 
pean community  as  it  will  be  in  fifteen  or  twenty 
years^  time.  Nominally  it  will  be  little  more  of  a 
Socialist  State  than  it  is  to-day,  but,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  ships,  the  railways,  the  coal  and  metal 
supply,  the  great  metal  industries,  much  engineer- 
ing, and  most  agriculture,  will  be  more  or  less  com- 
pletely under  collective  ownership,  and  certainly 
very  completely  under  collective  control.  This 
does  not  mean  that  there  will  have  been  any  disap- 
pearance of  private  property,  but  only  that  there 
will  have  been  a  very  considerable  change  in  its 
character;  the  owner  will  be  less  of  controller  but 
more  of  a  creditor;  he  will  be  a  rentier  or  an  an- 
nuitant. The  burthen  of  this  class  upon  the  com- 
munity will  not  be  relatively  quite  so  heavy  as  it 
would  otherwise  have  been,  because  of  a  very  con- 
siderable rise  in  wages  and  prices.  In  a  commun- 
ity in  which  all  the  great  initiatives  have  been  as- 
sumed by  the  State,  the  importance  of  financiers 
and  promoters  will  have  diminished  relatively  to 
the  importance  of  administrative  officials;  the  op- 


EUROPE  AND  SOCIALISM  123 

portunities  of  private  exploitation,  indeed,  will  have 
so  diminished  that  there  will  probably  be  far  less 
evidence  of  great  concentrations  of  private  wealth 
in  the  European  social  landscape  than  there  was 
before  the  war.  On  the  other  hand,  there  will  be 
an  enormously  increased  rentier  class  drawing  the 
interest  of  the  war  loans  from  the  community,  and 
maintaining  a  generally  high  standard  of  comfort. 
There  will  have  been  a  great  demand  for  adminis- 
trative and  technical  abilities  and  a  great  stimula- 
tion of  scientific  and  technical  education.  By  1926 
we  shall  be  going  about  a  world  that  will  have  re- 
covered very  largely  from  the  impoverishment  of 
the  struggle;  we  shall  tour  in  State-manufactured 
automobiles  upon  excellent  roads,  and  we  shall  live 
in  houses  equipped  with  a  national  factory  electric 
light  installation,  and  at  every  turn  we  shall  be 
using  and  consuming  the  products  of  nationalised 
industry  —  and  paying  off  the  National  Debt  at  the 
same  time,  and  reducing  our  burden  of  rentiers. 
Our  boys  will  be  studying  science  in  their  schools 
more  thoroughly  than  they  do  now,  and  they  will 
in  many  cases  be  learning  Russian  instead  of  Greek 
or  German.  More  of  our  boys  will  be  going  into  the 
public  service,  and  fewer  thinking  of  private  busi- 
ness, and  they  will  be  going  into  the  public  service. 


124  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

not  as  clerks,  but  as  engineers,  technical  chemists, 
manufacturers,  State  agriculturists,  and  the  like. 
The  public  service  will  be  less  a  service  of  clerks  and 
more  a  service  of  practical  men.  The  ties  that 
bind  France  and  Great  Britain  at  the  present  mo- 
ment will  have  been  drawn  very  much  closer. 
France,  Belgium,  and  England  will  be  drifting 
towards  a  French-English  bi-lingualism.  .  .  . 

So  much  of  our  picture  we  may  splash  in  now. 
Much  that  is  quite  essential  remains  to  be  dis- 
cussed. So  far  we  have  said  scarcely  a  word  about 
the  prospects  of  party  politics  and  the  problems  of 
government  that  arise  as  the  State  ceases  to  be  a 
mere  impartial  adjudicator  between  private  in- 
dividuals, and  takes  upon  itself  more  and  more  of 
the  direction  of  the  general  life  of  the  community. 


VI 

LAWYER  AND  PRESS 

The  riddle  of  administration  is  the  most  subtle  of 
all  those  that  the  would-be  prophet  of  the  things 
that  are  coming  must  attempt.  We  see  the  great 
modern  States  confronted  now  by  vast  and  urgent 
necessities,  by  opportunities  that  may  never  recur. 
Individualism  has  achieved  its  inevitable  failure; 
"  go  as  you  please ''  in  a  world  that  also  contained 
aggressive  militarism,  has  broken  down.  We  live 
in  a  world  of  improvised  State  factories,  com- 
mandeered railways,  substituted  labour,  and  emerg- 
ency arrangements.  Our  vague-minded,  lax,  mod- 
ern democracy  has  to  pull  itself  together,  has  to 
take  over  and  administer  and  succeed  with  a  great 
system  of  collective  functions,  has  to  express  its 
collective  will  in  some  better  terms  than  "  go  as  you 
please,"  or  fail. 

And  we  find  the  affairs  of  nearly  every  great 
democratic  State  in  the  hands  of  a  class  of  men 
not  specially  adapted  to  any  such  constructive  or 
administrative  work. 

125 


126  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

I  am  writing  here  now  chiefly  of  the  Western  Al- 
lies. Russia  is  peculiar  in  having  her  administra- 
tive machine  much  more  highly  developed  in  rela- 
tion to  her  general  national  life  than  the  free  demo- 
cratic countries.  She  has  to  make  a  bureaucracy 
that  has  not  hitherto  been  an  example  for  efficiency, 
into  a  bureaucracy  that  will  be  constructive,  re- 
sponsive, liberal,  scientific  and  efficient;  the  west- 
ern countries  have  to  do  the  same  with  that 
oligarchy  of  politicians  which,  as  Professor  Michels 
has  recently  pointed  out  in  his  striking  book  on 
Political  Parties y  is  the  necessary  reality  of 
democratic  government.  By  different  methods  the 
Eastern  and  Western  Powers  have  to  attain  a  com- 
mon end.  Both  bureaucracy  and  pseudo-demo- 
cratic oligarchy  have  to  accomplish  an  identical 
task,  to  cement  the  pacific  alliance  of  the  Pledged 
Allies  and  to  socialise  their  common  industrial  and 
economic  life,  so  as  to  make  it  invulnerable  to  for- 
eign attack. 

Now  in  Great  Britain,  which  is  the  democracy 
that  has  been  most  under  the  close  observation  of 
the  present  prophet,  there  is  at  present  a  great  out- 
cry against  the  "  politician,"  and  more  particularly 
against  the  "lawyer-politician."  He  is  our  em- 
barrassment.    In  him  we  personify  all  our  diflficul- 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  127 

ties.  Let  us  consider  the  charges  against  this  in- 
dividual. Let  us  ask,  can  we  do  without  him? 
And  let  us  further  see  what  chances  there  may  be 
of  so  altering,  qualifying,  or  balancing  him  as  to 
minimise  the  evil  of  his  influence.  To  begin  with, 
let  us  run  over  the  essentials  of  the  charge  against 
him. 

It  is  with  a  modest  blush  that  the  present  prophet 
recapitulates  these  charges.  So  early  as  the  year 
1902  he  was  lifting  up  his  voice,  not  exactly  in  the 
wilderness,  but  at  least  in  the  Royal  Institution, 
against  the  legal  as  compared  with  the  creative  or 
futurist  type  of  mind.  The  legal  mind,  he  insisted, 
looks  necessarily  to  the  past.  It  is  dilatory  be- 
cause it  has  no  sense  of  coming  things,  it  is  unin- 
ventive  and  wasteful,  it  does  not  create,  it  takes  ad- 
vantage. It  is  the  type  of  mind  least  able,  under 
any  circumstances,  to  organise  great  businesses,  to 
plan  campaigns,  to  adventure  or  achieve.  "  Wait 
and  see''  crystallises  its  spirit.  Its  resistance  is 
admirable,  and  it  has  no  "  go.''  Nevertheless  there 
is  a  tendency  for  power  to  gravitate  in  all  demo- 
cratic countries  to  the  lawyer. 

In  the  British  system  the  normal  faults  of  the 
lawyer  are  enhanced,  and  his  predominance  intensi- 
fied, by  certain  peculiarities  of  our  system.     In  the 


128  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

first  place  lie  belongs  to  a  guild  of  exceptional 
power.  In  Britain  it  happens  that  the  unfortu- 
nate course  was  taken  ages  ago,  of  bribing  the  whole 
legal  profession  to  be  honest.  The  British  judges 
and  law  officers  are  stupendously  overpaid  in  or- 
der to  make  them  incorruptible;  it  is  a  poor  but 
perhaps  a  well-merited  compliment  to  their  profes- 
sional code.  We  have  squared  the  whole  profession 
to  be  individually  unbribable.  The  judges,  more- 
over, in  the  Anglo-Saxon  communities  are  ap- 
pointed from  among  the  leading  barristers,  an  ar- 
rangement that  a  child  can  see  is  demoralising  and 
inadvisable.  And  in  Great  Britain  all  the  greatest 
salaries  in  the  Government  service  are  reserved  for 
the  legal  profession.  The  greatest  prizes,  therefore, 
before  an  energetic  young  man  who  has  to  make  his 
way  in  Great  Britain  are  the  legal  prizes,  and  his 
line  of  advancement  to  these  lies,  for  all  the  best 
years  of  his  life,  not  through  the  public  service,  but 
through  the  private  practice  of  advocacy.  The 
higher  education,  such  as  it  is,  in  Great  Britain, 
produces  under  the  stimulus  of  these  conditions, 
an  advocate  as  its  finest  flower.  To  go  from  the 
posing  and  chatter  of  the  Union  Debating  Society 
to  a  university  laboratory  is,  in  Britain,  to  renounce 
ambition.     Few  men  of  exceptional  energy  will  do 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  129 

that.  The  national  consequences  of  this  state  of 
affairs  have  been  only  too  manifest  throughout  the 
conduct  of  the  war.  The  British  Government  has 
developed  all  the  strength  and  all  the  weakness  of 
the  great  profession  it  represents.  It  has  been  un- 
inventive,  dilatory,  and  without  initiative;  it  has 
been  wasteful  and  evasive ;  but  it  has  not  been  want- 
ing in  a  certain  eloquence  and  dignity,  it  has  been 
wary  and  shrewd,  and  it  has  held  on  to  office  with 
the  concentrated  skill  and  determination  of  a  sucker 
fish.  And  the  British  mind,  with  a  concentration 
and  intensity  unprecedented  before  the  war,  is 
speculating  how  it  can  contrive  to  get  a  different 
sort  of  ruler  and  administrator  at  work  upon  its 
affairs. 

There  is  a  disposition  in  the  Press  and  much  of 
the  private  talk  one  hears  to  get  rid  of  lawyers  from 
the  control  of  national  affairs  altogether,  to  sub- 
stitute "  business  men ''  or  scientific  men  or  "  ex- 
perts." That  way  lies  dictatorship  and  Csesarism. 
And  even  Great  Britain  is  not  so  heedless  of  the 
experiences  of  other  nations  as  to  attempt  again 
what  has  already  been  so  abundantly  worked  out  in 
national  disaster  across  the  Channel.  The  essen- 
tial business  of  government  is  to  deal  between  man 
and  man ;  it  is  not  to  manage  the  national  affairs  in 


130  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

detail,  but  to  secure  the  proper  managers,  investiga- 
tors, administrators,  generals,  and  so  forth,  to 
maintain  their  efficiency,  and  keep  the  balance  be- 
tween them.  We  cannot  do  without  a  special  class 
of  men  for  these  interventions  and  controls.  In 
other  words,  we  cannot  do  without  a  special  class 
of  politicians.  They  may  be  elected  by  a  public, 
or  appointed  by  an  autocrat;  at  some  point  they 
have  to  come  in.  And  this  business  of  intervening 
between  men  and  classes  and  departments  in  public 
life,  and  getting  them  to  work  together,  is  so  closely 
akin  to  the  proper  work  of  a  lawyer  in  dealing  be- 
tween men  and  men,  that  unless  the  latter  are  ab- 
solutely barred  from  becoming  the  former,  it  is  al- 
most unavoidable  that  politicians  should  be  drawn 
more  abundantly  from  the  lawyer  class  than  from 
any  other  class  in  the  community. 

This  is  so  much  the  case  that  when  the  London 
Times  turns  in  despair  from  a  Government  of 
lawyers  and  looks  about  for  an  alternative,  the  first 
figure  that  presents  itself  is  that  distinguished  ad- 
vocate —  Sir  Edward  Carson ! 

But  there  is  a  difference  between  recognising 
that  some  sort  of  lawyer-politician  is  unavoidable 
and  agreeing  that  the  existing  type  of  lawyer  who 
is  so  largely  accountable  for  the  massive  slowness, 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  131 

the  confused  action,  the  slovenliness  rather  than 
the  weakness  of  purpose,  shown  by  Great  Britain 
in  this  war,  is  the  only  possible  type.  The  British 
system  of  education  and  legal  organisation  is  not 
the  last  word  of  human  wisdom  in  these  matters. 

The  real  case  we  British  have  against  our 
lawyers,  if  I  may  adopt  an  expressive  colloquialism, 
is  not  that  they  are  lawyers  but  that  they  are  such 
infernal  lawyers.  They  trail  into  modern  life  most 
of  the  faults  of  a  mediaeval  guild.  They  seem  to 
have  no  sense  of  the  state  they  could  develop,  no 
sense  of  the  future  they  might  control.  Their  law 
and  procedure  has  never  been  remodelled  upon  the 
framework  of  modern  ideas;  their  minds  are  still 
set  to  the  tune  of  mediaeval  bickerings,  traditional- 
ism, and  state  blindness.  They  are  mystery  deal- 
ers, almost  unanimously  they  have  resisted  giving 
the  common  man  the  protection  of  a  code.  In 
Great  Britain  we  have  had  no  Napoleon  to  override 
the  profession.  It  is  extraordinary  how  complete 
has  been  their  preservation  of  barbaric  conceptions. 
Even  the  doctor  is  now  largely  emancipated  from 
his  archaic  limitations  as  a  skilled  retainer.  He 
thinks  more  and  more  of  the  public  health,  and  less 
and  less  of  his  patron.  The  more  recent  a  profes- 
sion the  less  there  is  of  the  individualistic  personal 


132  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

reference ;  scientific  research,  for  example,  disavows 
and  forbids  every  personal  reference.  But  while 
every  one  would  be  shocked  at  some  great  doctor,  or 
some  great  research  institution,  in  these  days  of 
urgent  necessity  spending  two  or  three  weeks  on 
the  minor  ailments  of  some  rich  person's  lap-dog, 
nobody  is  scandalised  at  the  spectacle  of  Sir  Ed- 
ward Carson  and  a  costly  law  court  spending  long 
days  upon  the  sordid  disputes  that  centre  upon 
young  Master  Slingsby's  ear  —  whether  it  is  the 
Slingsby  family  ear,  or  the  ear  of  a  supposititious 
child  —  a  question  that  any  three  old  women  might 
be  trusted  to  settle.  After  that  he  rests  for  a  fort- 
night and  recuperates  and  returns  —  to  take  up  a 
will  case  turning  upon  the  toy  rabbits  and  suchlike 
trifles  which  entertained  the  declining  years  of  a 
nonagenarian.  This,  when  we  are  assured  that 
the  country  awaits  Sir  Edward  as  its  Deliverer. 
It  is  as  if  Lord  Kitchener  took  a  month  off  to  act  at 
specially  high  rates  for  the  "  movies."  Our  stand- 
ard for  the  lawyer  is  older  and  lower  than  it  is  for 
other  men. 

There  is  no  more  reason  nowadays  why  a  lawyer 
should  look  to  advocacy  as  a  proper  use  of  his 
knowledge  than  that  a  doctor  should  make  private 
poisoning  the  lucrative  side  of  his  profession. 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  133 

There  is  no  reason  why  a  court  of  law  should  ig- 
nore the  plain  right  of  the  common  weal  to  inter- 
vene in  every  case  between  man  and  man.  There  is 
every  reason  why  trivial  disputes  about  wills  and 
legitimacy  should  not  be  wasting  our  national  re- 
sources at  the  present  time,  when  nearly  every  other 
form  of  waste  is  being  restrained.  The  sound  case 
against  the  legal  profession  in  Anglo-Saxon  coun- 
tries is  not  that  it  is  unnecessary,  but  that  it  is  al- 
most incredibly  antiquated,  almost  incredibly  care- 
less of  the  public  well-being,  and  that  it  corrupts 
or  dwarfs  all  the  men  who  enter  it.  Our  urgent 
need  is  not  so  much  to  get  rid  of  the  lawyer  from 
our  affairs  as  to  get  rid  of  the  wig  and  gown 
spirit  and  of  the  special  pleader,  and  to  find  and 
develop  the  new  lawyer,  the  lawyer  who  is  not  an 
advocate,  who  is  not  afraid  of  a  code,  who  has  had 
some  scientific  education,  and  whose  imagination 
has  been  quickened  by  the  realisation  of  life  as  crea- 
tive opportunity.  We  want  to  emancipate  this  pro- 
fession from  its  ancient  guild  restrictions  —  the 
most  anti-social  and  disastroTis  of  all  such  restric- 
tions—  to  destroy  its  disgraceful  traditions  of 
over-payment  and  fee-snatching,  to  insist  upon  a 
scientific,  philosophical  training  for  its  practition- 
ers, to  make  the  practice  of  advocacy  a  fall  from 


134  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

grace,  and  to  bar  professional  advocates  from  the 
bench.  In  the  Britsh  trenches  now  there  must  be 
many  hundreds  of  fine  young  lawyers,  still  but  little 
corrupted,  who  would  be  only  too  glad  to  exchange 
the  sordid  vulgarities  and  essential  dishonour  of  a 
successful  lawyer's  career  under  the  old  conditions 
for  lives  of  service  and  statescraft.  .  .  . 

No  observer  of  the  general  trend  of  events  in  Eu- 
rope will  get  any  real  grasp  of  what  is  happening 
until  he  realises  the  cardinal  importance  of  the  re- 
actions that  centre  upon  this  question.  The  cur- 
rent development  of  political  institutions,  and  the 
possible  development  of  a  new  spirit  and  method 
in  the  legal  profession,  are  so  intimately  interwoven 
as  to  be  practically  one  and  the  same  question.  The 
international  question  is,  can  we  get  a  new  Ger- 
many? The  national  question  everywhere  is,  can 
we  get  a  better  politician? 

The  widely  prevalent  discontent  with  the  part 
played  by  the  lawyer  in  the  affairs  of  all  the  West- 
ern Allies  is  certain  to  develop  into  a  vigorous  agi- 
tation for  legal  reconstruction.  In  the  case  of 
every  other  great  trade  union,  the  war  has  exacted 
profound  and  vital  concessions.  The  British  work- 
ing men,  for  example,  have  abandoned  scores  of 
protective  restrictions  upon  women's  labour,  upon 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  135 

unskilled  labour,  for  which  they  have  fought  for 
generations ;  they  have  submitted  to  a  virtual  serf- 
dom, that  the  nation's  needs  might  be  supplied ;  the 
medical  profession  has  sent  almost  too  large  a  pro- 
portion of  its  members  to  the  front;  the  scientific 
men,  the  writers,  have  been  begging  to  be  used  in 
any  capacity  at  any  price  or  none ;  the  Ministry  of 
Munitions  is  full  of  unpaid  workers,  and  so  on.  It 
is  the  British  legal  profession  and  trade  union  alone 
that  has  made  no  sign  of  any  disposition  to  relax  its 
elaborate  restrictions  upon  the  labour  of  amateurs 
and  women,  or  to  abate  one  jot  or  one  tittle  of  its 
habitual  rewards.  There  has  been  no  attempt  to 
reduce  the  costly  law  officers  of  the  Government, 
for  example,  or  to  call  in  the  help  of  older  men  or 
women  to  release  law  officers  who,  like  Sir  John 
Simon  and  Sir  F.  E.  Smith,  are  of  military  experi- 
ence or  age. 

And  I  must  admit  that  there  are  small  signs  of 
the  advent  of  the  "  new  lawyer,''  at  whose  possibil- 
ity I  have  just  flung  a  hopeful  glance,  to  replace  the 
existing  mass  of  mediaeval  unsoundness.  Barris- 
ters seem  to  age  prematurely  —  at  least  in  Great 
Britain  —  unless  they  are  born  old.  In  the  legal 
profession  one  hears  nothing  of  "  the  young  " ;  one 
hears  only  of  "  smart  juniors."     Reform  and  pro- 


136  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

gressive  criticism  in  the  legal  profession,  unlike  all 
other  professions,  seem  to  be  the  monopoly  of  the 
retired. 

Nevertheless,  Great  Britain  is  as  yet  only  be- 
ginning to  feel  the  real  stresses  of  the  war;  she  is 
coming  into  the  full  strain  a  year  behind  France, 
Germany,  and  Russia;  and  after  the  war  there  lies 
the  possibility  of  still  more  violent  stresses ;  so  that 
what  is  as  yet  a  mere  cloud  of  criticism  and  resent- 
ment at  our  lawyer-politicians  and  privileged  legal 
profession  may  gather  to  a  great  storm  before  1918 
or  1919.  I  am  inclined  to  foretell  as  one  most 
highly  probable  development  of  the  present  vague 
but  very  considerable  revolt  against  the  lawyer  in 
British  public  life,  first  some  clumsy  proposals,  or 
even  attempts,  to  leave  him  out  and  use  "  business 
men,"  soldiers,  admirals,  dictators,  or  men  of 
science,  in  his  place  —  which  is  rather  like  throwing 
away  a  blottesque  fountain  pen  and  trying  to  write 
with  a  walking-stick  or  a  revolver  or  a  flash-light  — 
and  then,  when  that  is  found  to  be  impossible,  a 
resolute  attempt  to  clean  and  reconstitute  the  legal 
profession  on  modern  and  more  honourable  lines; 
a  movement  into  which  quite  possibly  a  number  of 
the  younger  British  lawyers,  so  soon  as  they  realise 
that  the  movement  is  good  enough  to  risk  careers 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  137 

upon,  may  throw  themselves.  A  large  share  in  such 
a  reform  movement,  if  it  occurs,  will  be  brought 
about  by  the  Press ;  by  w  hich  I  mean  not  simply  the 
periodical  Press,  but  all  books  and  contemporary 
discussion.  It  is  only  by  the  natural  playing  off  of 
Press  against  lawyer-politician  that  democratic 
States  can  ever  come  to  their  own. 

And  that  brings  me  to  the  second  part  of  this 
question,  which  is  whether,  quite  apart  from  the 
possible  reform  and  spiritual  rebirth  of  the  legal 
profession,  there  is  not  also  the  possibility  of  bal- 
ancing and  correcting  its  influence.  In  ancient 
Hebrew  history  —  it  may  be  a  warning  rather  than 
a  precedent  —  there  were  two  great  forces,  one 
formal,  conservative  and  corrupting,  the  other  un- 
disciplined, creative  and  destructive ;  the  first  was 
the  priest,  the  second  the  prophet.  Their  interac- 
tion is  being  extraordinarily  paralleled  in  the 
Anglo-Saxon  democracies  by  the  interaction  of 
lawyer-politician  and  Press  to-day.  If  the  lawyer- 
politician  is  unavoidable,  the  Press  is  indispensable. 
It  is  not  in  the  clash  and  manoeuvres  and  mutual 
correction  of  party,  but  in  the  essential  conflict  of 
political  authority  on  the  one  hand  and  Press  on  the 
other  that  the  future  of  democratic  government  ap- 
parently   lies.     In    the    clearer,    simpler    case    of 


138  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

France,  a  less  wealthy  and  finer  type  of  lawyer  in- 
teracts with  a  less  impersonal  Press.  It  is  in  the 
great  contrasts  and  the  essential  parallelism  of  the 
French  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  democratic  systems 
that  one  finds  the  best  practical  reason  for  antici- 
pating very  profound  changes  in  these  two  inevi- 
tables of  democracy,  the  Press  and  the  lawyer-poli- 
tician, and  for  assuming  that  the  method  of  democ- 
racy has  still  a  vast  range  of  experimental  adjust- 
ment between  them  still  untried.  Such  experi- 
mental adjustment  will  be  the  chief  necessity  and 
business  of  political  life  in  every  country  of  the 
world  for  the  next  few  decades. 

The  lawyer-politician  and  the  Press  are,  as  it 
were,  the  right  and  left  hands  of  a  modern  democ- 
racy. The  war  has  brought  this  out  clearly.  It 
has  ruptured  the  long-weakened  bonds  that  once 
linked  this  and  that  newspaper  with  this  and  that 
party.  For  years  the  Press  of  all  the  Western 
democracies  has  been  drifting  slowly  away  from 
the  tradition  —  it  lasted  longest  and  was  developed 
most  completely  in  Great  Britain  —  that  news- 
papers were  party  organs. 

In  the  novels  of  Disraeli  the  Press  appears  as  an 
ambiguously  helpful  person  who  is  asked  out  to 
dinner,  who  is  even  admitted  to  week-end  confer- 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  139 

ences,  by  the  political  great.  He  takes  his  orders 
from  the  Whig  peers  or  the  Troy  peers.  At  his 
greatest  he  advises  them  respectfully.  But  that 
was  in  the  closing  days  of  the  British  oligarchy; 
that  was  before  modern  democracy  had  begun  to 
produce  its  characteristic  political  forms.  It  is  not 
so  very  much  more  than  a  century  ago  that  Great 
Britain  had  her  first  lawyer  Prime  Minister. 
Through  all  the  Napoleonic  wars  she  was  still  a 
country  ruled  by  great  feudal  landlords  and  gentle- 
men adventurers  associated  with  them.  The  law- 
yers only  came  to  their  own  at  the  close  of  the  great 
Victorian  duet  of  Disraeli  and  Gladstone,  the  last 
of  the  political  gentlemen  adventurers.  It  is  only 
now,  in  the  jolts  and  dissatisfactions  of  this  w^ar, 
that  Great  Britain  rubs  her  eyes  and  looks  at  her 
government  as  it  is. 

The  old  oligarchy  established  the  tradition  of  her 
diplomacy.  Illiberal  at  home,  it  was  liberal 
abroad ;  Great  Britain  was  the  defender  of  national- 
ity, of  constitutionalism,  and  of  the  balance  of 
power  against  the  holy  alliance.  In  the  figure  of 
such  a  gentleman  as  Sir  Edward  Grey  the  old  order 
mingles  with  the  new.  But  most  of  his  colleagues 
are  of  the  new  order.  They  would  have  been  in- 
credible in  the  days  of  Lord  Melbourne.     In  its 


140  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

essential  quality  the  present  British  government  is 
far  more  closely  akin  to  the  French  than  it  is  to  its 
predecessor  of  a  hundred  years  ago.  Essentially 
it  is  a  government  of  lawyer-politicians  with  no 
close  family  ties  or  intimate  political  traditions  and 
prejudices.  And  its  natural  and  proper  corrective 
is  the  Press,  over  which  it  fails  to  exercise  now  even 
a  shadow  of  the  political  and  social  influence  that 
once  kept  that  power  in  subjection. 

It  is  the  way  with  all  human  institutions;  they 
remain  in  appearance  long  after  they  have  passed 
away  in  reality.  It  is  on  record  that  the  Roman 
Senate  still  thought  Rome  was  a  republic  in  the 
third  century  of  the  Christian  era.  It  is  nothing 
wonderful,  therefore,  that  people  suppose  that  the 
King,  the  Lords,  and  the  Commons,  debating 
through  a  Ministry  and  an  Opposition,  still  govern 
the  British  Empire.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  the 
lawyer-politicians,  split  by  factions  that  simulate 
the  ancient  Government  and  Opposition,  who  rule, 
under  a  steadily  growing  pressure  and  checking  by 
the  Press.  Since  this  war  began  the  Press  has  re- 
leased itself  almost  inadvertently  from  its  last  asso- 
ciation with  the  dying  conflicts  of  party  politics, 
and  has  taken  its  place  as  a  distinct  power  in  the 
realm,  claiming  to  be  more  representative  of  the 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  141 

people  than  their  elected  representatives,  and  more 
expressive  of  the  national  mind  and  will. 

Now,  there  is  considerable  validity  in  this  claim. 
It  is  easy  to  say  that  a  paper  may  be  bought  by  any 
proprietor  and  set  to  put  w^hat  he  chooses  into  the 
public  mind.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  buying  a  news- 
paper is  far  more  costly  and  public  a  proceeding 
than  buying  a  politician.  And  if  on  the  one  hand 
the  public  has  no  control  over  w^hat  is  printed  in  a 
paper,  it  has  on  the  other  the  very  completest  con- 
trol over  what  is  read.  A  politician  is  checked  by 
votes  cast  once  in  several  years,  a  newspaper  is 
checked  by  sales  that  vary  significantly  from  day 
to  day.  A  newspaper  with  no  circulation  is  a  news- 
paper that  does  not  matter ;  a  few  w^eeks  will  suffice 
to  show  if  it  has  carried  its  public  with  it  or  gone 
out  of  influence.  It  is  absurd  to  speak  of  a  new^s- 
paper  as  being  less  responsible  than  a  politician. 

Nevertheless  the  influence  of  a  great  newspaper 
is  so  much  greater  than  that  of  any  politician,  and 
its  power,  more  particularly  for  mischief  —  for  the 
creation  of  panic  conditions,  for  example  —  so 
much  swifter,  that  it  is  open  to  question  whether 
the  Press  is  at  present  sufficiently  held  to  its  enor- 
mous responsibilities.  Let  us  consider  its  weak- 
nesses at  the  present  time ;  let  us  ask  what  changes 


142  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

in  its  circumstances  are  desirable  in  the  public  in- 
terest, and  what  are  likely  to  come  about.  We  have 
already  reckoned  upon  the  Press  as  a  chief  factor  in 
the  adequate  criticism,  cleansing,  and  modernisa- 
tion of  the  British  lawyer-politician.  Is  there  any 
power  to  which  we  may  look  for  the  security  of  the 
Press?  And  I  submit  the  answer  is  the  Press. 
For  while  the  legal  profession  is  naturally  homo- 
geneous, the  Press  is  by  nature  heterogeneous. 
Dog  does  not  eat  dog,  nor  lawyer  lawyer;  but  the 
newspapers  are  sharks  and  cannibals;  they  are  in 
perpetual  conflict ;  the  Press  is  a  profession  as  open 
as  the  law  is  closed ;  it  has  no  anti-social  guild  feel- 
ing ;  it  washes  its  dirty  linen  in  public  by  choice  and 
necessity,  and  disdains  all  professional  etiquette. 
Few  people  know  what  criticisms  of  the  Lord  Chief 
Justice  may  have  ripened  in  the  minds  of  Lord 
Halsbury  or  Sir  Edward  Carson,  but  we  all  know, 
to  a  very  considerable  degree  of  accuracy,  the  worst 
of  what  this  great  journalist  or  group  of  newspaper 
proprietors  thinks  of  that. 

We  have  therefore  considerable  reason  for  regard- 
ing the  Press  as  being,  in  contrast  with  the  legal 
profession,  a  self-reforming  body.  In  the  last  dec- 
ade there  has  been  an  enormous  mass  of  criticism 
of  the  Press  by  the  Press.     There  has  been  a  tend- 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  143 

ency  to  exaggerate  its  irresponsibility.  A  better 
case  is  to  be  made  against  it  for  what  I  will  call, 
using  the  word  in  its  least  offensive  sense,  its  venal- 
ity. By  venality  I  mean  the  fact,  a  legacy  from  the 
now  happily  vanishing  age  of  individualism,  that  in 
theory  and  law^,  at  least,  any  one  may  own  a  news- 
paper and  sell  it  publicly  or  secretly  to  any  one, 
that  its  circulation  and  advertisement  receipts  may 
be  kept  secret  or  not  as  the  proprietors  choose,  and 
that  the  proprietor  is  accountable  to  no  one  for  any 
exceptional  incomings  or  any  sudden  fluctuations 
in  policy.  A  few  years  ago  we  w^ere  all  discussing 
who  should  buy  The  Times;  I  do  not  know^  what 
chances  an  agent  of  the  Kaiser  might  not  have  had 
if  he  had  been  sufficiently  discreet.  This  venality 
will  be  far  more  dangerous  to  the  Allied  countries 
after  the  war  than  during  its  continuance.  So  long 
as  the  state  of  war  lasts  there  are  prompt  methods 
available  for  any  direct  newspaper  treason,  and  it 
is  in  the  neutral  countries  only  that  the  buying  and 
selling  of  papers  against  the  national  interest  has 
occurred  to  any  marked  extent.  Directly  peace  is 
signed,  unless  we  provide  for  the  event  beforehand, 
our  Press  will  pass  under  neutral  conditions. 
There  will  be  nothing  to  prevent,  for  example,  any 
foreseeing  foreign  Power  coming  into  Great  Britain, 


144  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

offering  to  buy  up  not  only  this  paper  or  that,  but 
also,  what  is  far  more  important,  to  buy  up  the 
great  book  and  newspaper  distributing  firms. 
These  vitally  important  public  services  so  far  as 
law  and  theory  go  will  be  as  entirely  in  the  market 
as  railway  tickets  at  a  station,  unless  we  make  some 
intelligent  preventive  provision.  Unless  we  do, 
and  if,  as  is  highly  probable,  peace  puts  no  imme- 
diate stop  to  international  malignity,  the  Germans 
will  be  bigger  fools  than  I  think  them  if  they  do 
not  try  to  get  hold  of  these  public  services.  It  is  a 
matter  of  primary  importance  in  the  outlook  of 
every  country  in  Europe,  therefore,  that  it  should 
insist  upon  and  secure  responsible  native  ownership 
of  every  newspaper  and  news  and  book  distributing 
agency,  and  the  most  drastic  punishment  for  news- 
paper corruption.  Given  that  guarantee  against 
foreign  bribery,  we  may,  I  think,  let  free  speech 
rage.  This  is  so  much  a  matter  of  common-sense 
that  I  cannot  imagine  even  British  "  wait  and  see  " 
waiting  for  the  inevitable  assault  upon  our  national 
journalistic  virtue  that  will  follow  the  peace. 

So  I  spread  out  the  considerations  that  I  think 
justify  our  forecasting,  in  a  very  changed  Great 
Britain  and  a  changed  Europe,  firstly,  a  legal  pro- 
fession with  a  quickened  conscience,  a  sense  of  pub- 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  145 

lie  function  and  a  reformed  organisation,  and,  sec- 
ondly, a  Press,  which  is  recognised  and  held  ac- 
countable in  law  and  in  men's  minds,  as  an  estate 
of  the  realm,  as  something  implicitly  under  oath  to 
serve  the  State.  I  do  not  agree  with  Professor 
Michels'  pessimistic  conclusion  that  peace  will 
bring  back  exacerbated  party  politics  and  a  new 
era  of  futility  to  the  democratic  countries.  I  be- 
lieve that  the  tremendous  demonstration  of  this 
war  (a  demonstration  that  gains  weight  with  every 
week  of  our  lengthening  effort),  of  the  waste  and 
inefficiency  of  the  system  of  1913-14,  will  break 
down  at  last  even  the  conservatism  of  the  most 
rigidly  organised  and  powerful  and  out-of-date  of 
all  professions.  It  is  not  only  that  I  look  to  the  in- 
dignation and  energy  of  intelligent  men  who  are 
outside  our  legal  and  political  system  to  reform  it, 
but  to  those  who  are  in  it  now.  A  man  may  be 
quietly  parasitic  upon  his  mother,  and  yet  incap- 
able of  matricide.  So  much  of  our  national  energy 
and  ability  has  been  attracted  to  the  law  in  Great 
Britain  that  our  nation  with  our  lawyers  in  modern 
clothing  instead  of  wigs  and  gown,  lawyers  who 
have  studied  science  and  social  theory  instead  of  the 
spoutings  of  Cicero  and  loquacious  artfulness  of  W. 
E.  Gladstone,  lawyers  who  look  forward  at  the  des- 


146  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

tiny  of  their  country  instead  of  backward  and  at  the 
markings  on  their  briefs,  may  yet  astonish  the 
world.  The  British  lawyer  really  holds  the  future 
of  the  British  Empire,  and,  indeed,  I  could  almost 
say,  of  the  whole  world,  in  his  hands  at  the  present 
time,  as  much  as  any  single  sort  of  man  can  be  said 
to  hold  it.  Inside  his  skull  imagination  and  a 
heavy  devil  of  evil  precedent  fight  for  his  soul  and 
the  welfare  of  the  world.  And  generosity  fights 
against  tradition  and  individualism.  Only  the 
men  of  the  Press  have  anything  like  the  same  great 
possibilities  of  betrayal.  To  these  two  sorts  of  men 
the  dim  spirit  of  the  nation  looks  for  such  leading 
as  a  democracy  can  follow.  To  them  the  men  with 
every  sort  of  special  ability,  the  men  of  science,  the 
men  of  this  or  that  sort  of  administrative  ability 
and  experience,  the  men  of  creative  gifts  and  habits, 
every  sort  of  man  who  wants  the  world  to  get  on, 
look  for  the  removal  (or  the  ingenious  contrivance) 
of  obstructions  and  entanglements,  for  the  allaying 
(or  the  fomentation)  of  suspicion,  misapprehen- 
sion, and  ignorant  opposition,  for  administration 
(or  class  blackmail). 

Yet  while  I  sit  as  a  prophetic  amateur  weighing 
these  impalpable  forces  of  will  and  imagination 
and  habit  and  interest  in  lawyer,  Pressman,  maker 


LAWYER  AND  PRESS  147 

and  administrator,  and  feeling  by  no  means  over- 
confident of  the  issue,  it  dawns  upon  me  suddenly 
that  there  is  another  figure  present,  who  has  never 
been  present  before  in  the  reckoning  up  of  British 
affairs.  It  is  a  silent  figure.  This  figure  stands 
among  the  Pressmen  and  among  the  lawyers  and 
among  the  workers ;  for  a  couple  of  decades  at  least 
he  will  be  everywhere  in  the  British  system;  he  is 
young  and  he  is  uniformed  in  khaki,  and  he  brings 
with  him  a  new  spirit  into  British  life,  the  spirit  of 
the  new  soldier,  the  spirit  of  subordination  to  a 
common  purpose.  .  .  . 

France,  which  has  lived  so  much  farther  and 
deeper  and  more  bitterly  than  Britain,  knows.  .  .  .* 

*  In  Social  Forces  in  England  and  America,  a  companion 
volume  to  the  present  one,  the  reader  will  find  a  full  discussion 
of  the  probable  benefit  of  proportional  representation  in  elimi- 
nating the  party  hack  from  political  life.  Proportional  repre- 
sentation would  probably  break  up  party  organisations  alto- 
gether, and  it  would  considerably  enhance  tne  importance  and 
responsibility  of  the  Press.  It  would  do  much  to  accelerate 
the  development  of  the  state  of  affairs  here  foreshadowed,  in 
which  the  role  of  government  and  opposition  under  the  party 
system  will  be  played  by  elected  representatives  and  Press  re- 
spectively. 


VII 

THE  NEW  EDUCATION 

Some  few  months  ago,  Mr.  Harold  Spender,  in  the 
Daily  NewSy  was  calling  attention  to  a  very  signifi- 
cant fact  indeed.  The  higher  education  in  Eng- 
land, and  more  particularly  the  educational  process 
of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  which  has  been  going  on 
continuously  since  the  Middle  Ages,  is  practically 
in  a  state  of  suspense.  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
have  stopped.  They  have  stopped  so  completely 
that  Mr.  Spender  can  speculate  whether  they  can 
ever  pick  up  again  and  resume  upon  the  old  lines. 
For  my  own  part,  as  the  father  of  two  sons  who 
are  at  present  in  mid-school,  I  hope  with  all  my 
heart  that  they  will  not.  I  hope  that  the  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  of  unphilosophical  classics  and 
little-go  Greek  for  everybody,  don's  mathematics, 
bad  French,  ignorance  of  all  Europe  except  Switzer- 
land, forensic  exercises  in  the  Union  Debating  So- 
ciety, and  cant  about  the  Gothic,  the  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  that  turned  boys  full  of  life  and  hope 
and  infinite  possibility  into  barristers,  politicians, 

148 


THE  NEW  EDUCATION  149 

mono-lingual  diplomatists,  bishops,  schoolmasters, 
company  directors,  and  remittance  men,  are  even 
now  dead.  Quite  recently  I  passed  through  Cam- 
bridge, and,  with  the  suggestions  of  Mr.  Spender  in 
my  mind,  I  paused  for  a  time  to  savour  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  place.  I  realised  that  he  had  very 
greatly  understated  the  facts  of  the  case.  He  laid 
stress  upon  the  fact  that  instead  of  the  normal  four 
thousand  undergraduates  or  so  there  are  now 
scarcely  four  hundred.  But  before  I  was  fairly  in 
Cambridge  I  realised  that  that  gives  no  idea  of 
the  real  cessation  of  English  education.  Of  the 
first  seven  undergraduates  I  saw  upon  the  Trump- 
ington  road  one  was  black,  three  were  coloured,  and 
one  of  the  remaining  three  was  certainly  not  Brit- 
ish but,  I  should  guess,  Spanish-American.  And  it 
isn't  only  the  undergraduates  who  have  gone.  All 
the  dons  of  military  age  and  quality  have  gone  too, 
or  are  staying  up  not  in  caps  and  gowns  but  in 
khaki;  all  the  vigorous  teachers  are  soldiering; 
there  are  no  dons  left  except  those  who  are  unfit  for 
service  —  and  the  clergy.  Buildings,  libraries, 
empty  laboratories,  empty  lecture  theatres,  vestiges, 
refugees,  neutrals,  khaki;  that  is  Cambridge  to- 
day. 

There  never  was  before,  there  never  may  be  again, 


150  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

so  wonderful  an  opportunity  for  a  cleaning-up  and 
sweeping-out  of  those  two  places,  and  for  a  profit- 
able new  start  in  British  education. 

The  cessation  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  does  not 
give  the  full  measure  of  the  present  occasion.  All 
the  other  British  universities  are  in  a  like  case. 
And  the  schools  which  feed  them  have  been  prac- 
tically swept  clean  of  their  senior  boys.  And  not  a 
tithe  of  any  of  this  war  class  of  school  boys  will  ever 
go  to  the  universities  now,  not  a  tithe  of  the  war 
class  of  undergraduates  will  ever  return.  Between 
the  new  education  and  the  old,  there  will  be  a  break 
of  two  school  generations.  For  the  next  thirty  or 
forty  years  an  exceptional  class  of  men  will  play  a 
leading  part  in  British  affairs,  men  who  will  have 
learnt  more  from  reality  and  less  from  lectures  than 
either  the  generations  that  preceded  or  the  genera- 
tions that  will  follow  them;  the  subalterns  of  the 
great  war  will  form  a  distinct  generation  and  mark 
an  epoch.  Their  experiences  of  need,  their  sense 
of  deficiences,  will  certainly  play  a  large  part  in 
the  reconstitution  of  the  British  education.  The 
stamp  of  the  old  system  will  not  he  on  them. 

Now  is  the  time  to  ask  what  sort  of  training 
should  a  university  give  to  produce  the  ruling,  di- 
recting, and  leading  men  which  it  exists  to  pro- 


THE  NEW  EDUCATION  151 

duce?  Upon  that  Great  Britain  will  need  to  make 
up  its  mind  speedily.  It  is  not  a  matter  for  to-mor- 
row or  the  day  after ;  it  is  necessary  to  decide  now 
what  it  is  the  Britain  that  is  coming  will  need  and 
want,  and  to  set  to  work  revising  the  admission  and 
degree  requirements  and  reconstructing  all  those 
systems  of  public  examinations  for  the  public  serv- 
ices that  necessarily  dominate  school  and  university 
teaching,  before  the  universities  and  schools  re- 
assemble. If  the  rotten  old  things  once  get  to- 
gether again,  the  rotten  old  things  will  have  a  new 
lease  of  life.  This  and  no  other  is  the  hour  for  edu- 
cational reconstruction.  And  it  is  in  the  decisions 
and  readjustments  of  schools  and  lectures  and 
courses,  far  more  than  anywhere  else,  that  the  real 
future  of  Great  Britain  will  be  decided.  Equally 
true  is  this  of  all  the  belligerent  countries.  Much 
of  the  future  has  a  kind  of  mechanical  inevitable- 
ness,  but  here,  far  more  than  anywhere  else,  can  a 
few  resolute  and  capable  men  mould  the  spirit  and 
determine  the  quality  of  the  Europe  to  come. 

Now  surely  the  chief  things  that  are  needed  in 
the  education  of  a  ruling  class  are  these  —  First 
the  selection  and  development  of  Character,  then 
the  selection  and  development  of  Capacity,  and 
thirdly,  the  imparting  of  Knowledge  upon  broad 


152  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

and  comprehensive  lines,  and  the  power  of  rapidly 
taking  up  and  using  such  detailed  knowledge  as 
may  be  needed  for  special  occasions.  It  is  upon  the 
first  count  that  the  British  schools  and  universities 
have  been  most  open  to  criticism.  We  have  found 
the  British  university-trained  class  under  the  fiery 
tests  of  this  war  an  evasive,  temporising  class  of 
people,  individualistic,  ungenerous,  and  unable 
either  to  produce  or  obey  vigorous  leadership.  On 
the  whole,  it  is  a  matter  for  congratulation,  it  says 
wonderful  things  for  the  inherent  natural  qualities 
of  the  English-speaking  people,  that  things  have 
proved  no  worse  than  they  are,  considering  the  na- 
ture of  the  higher  education  under  w^hich  they  have 
suffered. 

Consider  in  what  that  educational  process  has 
consisted.  Its  backbone  has  been  the  teaching  of 
Latin  by  men  who  can  read,  write,  and  speak  it 
rather  worse  than  a  third-rate  Babu  speaks  Eng- 
lish, and  of  Ancient  Greek  by  teachers  who  at  best 
half  know  this  fine  lost  language.  They  do  not 
expect  any  real  mastery  of  either  tongue  by  their 
students,  and  naturally  therefore  no  real  mastery 
is  ever  attained.  The  boys  and  young  men  just 
muff  about  at  it  for  three  times  as  long  as  would 
be  needed  to  master  completely  both  those  tongues 


THE  NEW  EDUCATION  153 

if  they  had  ''  live ''  teachers,  and  so  they  acquire 
habits  of  busy  futility  and  petty  pedantry  in  all 
intellectual  processes  that  haunt  them  throughout 
life.     There  are  also  sterile  mathematical  studies 
that    never    get    from    "exercises"    to    practice. 
There  is  a  pretence  of  studying  philosophy  based  on 
Greek  texts  that  few  of  the  teachers  and  none  of 
the  taught  can  read  comfortably,  and  a  certain 
amount  of  history.     The  Modern  History  School  at 
Oxford,  for  example,  is  the  queerest  collection  of 
chunks  of  reading.     English  history  from  the  be- 
ginning, with  occasional  glances  at  continental  af- 
fairs, European  history  for  about  a  century,  bits  of 
economics,  and  — the  Politics  of  Aristotle!     It  is 
not  education;  it  is  a  jackdaw  collection.  .  .  .  This 
sort  of  jumble  has  been  the  essentials  of  the  more 
pretentious  type  of  "  higher  education  "  available 
in  Great  Britain  up  to  the  present.     Through  all 
the  most  sensitive  and  receptive  years  of  life  our 
boys  have  been  trained  in  "  how  not  to  get  there," 
in  a  variety  of  disconnected  subjects,  by  men  w^ho 
have  never  "  got  there,"  and  it  would  be  difficult 
to   imagine    any   curriculum    more   calculated   to 
produce  a  miscellaneous  incompetence.     They  have 
also,  it  happens,  received  a  certain  training  in  sa- 
voir  faire  through  the  collective  necessities  of  school 


154  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

life,  and  a  certain  sharpening  in  the  arts  of  ad- 
vocacy through  the  debating  society.  Except  for 
these  latter  helps,  they  have  had  to  face  the  world 
with  minds  neither  more  braced,  nor  more  trained, 
nor  more  informed  than  any  "  uneducated  "  man's. 
Surely  the  first  condition  that  should  be  laid 
down  for  the  new  education  in  Europe  is  that  what- 
ever is  undertaken  must  be  undertaken  in  grim 
earnest  and  done.  It  is  ridiculous  to  talk  about 
the  "  character-forming ''  value  of  any  study  that 
does  not  go  through  to  an  end.  Manifestly  Greek 
must  be  dropped  as  a  part  of  the  general  curricu- 
lum for  a  highly  educated  man,  for  the  simple  rea- 
son that  now  there  are  scarcely  any  competent 
teachers,  and  because  the  sham  of  teaching  it  par 
tially  and  pretentiously  demoralises  student  and 
school  alike.  The  claim  of  the  clergy  and  so  forth 
to  "  know ''  Greek  is  one  of  the  many  corrupting 
lies  in  British  intellectual  life.  English  comic 
writers  never  weary  of  sneering  at  the  Hindu  who 
claimed  to  be  a  "failed  B.  A.,"  but  what  is  the 
ordinary  classical  degree  man  of  an  English  uni- 
versity but  a  "  failed  "  Greek  scholar?  Latin,  too, 
must  be  either  reduced  to  the  position  of  a  study 
supplementary  to  the  native  tongue,  or  brought  up 
to  an  honest  level  of  efficiency.     French  and  Ger- 


THE  NEW  EDUCATION  155 

man  in  the  case  of  the  English,  and  English  in  the 
ease  of  the  French  and  Russians,  are  essentially 
governess  languages;  any  intelligent  boy  or  girl 
from  a  reasonably  prosperous  home  ought  to  be 
able  to  read,  write,  and  speak  either  before  fifteen ; 
they  are  to  be  taken  by  the  way  rather  than  re- 
garded as  a  fundamental  part  of  education.  The 
French,  German,  or  English  literature  and  liter- 
ary development  up  to  and  including  contemporary 
work  is  of  course  an  entirely  different  matter.  But 
there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  great  educational  value 
of  some  highly  inflected  and  well-developed  lan- 
guage taught  hy  men  to  wJiom  it  is  a  genuine  means 
of  expression.  Educational  needs  and  public  ne- 
cessity point  alike  to  such  languages  as  Russian  or, 
in  the  case  of  Great  Britain,  Hindustani  to  supply 
this  sound  training.  If  Great  Britain  means  busi- 
ness after  this  war,  if  she  is  to  do  her  duty  by  the 
Eastern  world  she  controls,  she  will  not  stick  at 
the  petty  expense  of  getting  a  few  hundreds  of  good 
Russian  and  Hindu  teachers  into  the  country,  and 
she  will  place  Russian  and  Hindustani  upon  at 
least  an  equal  footing  with  Greek  in  all  her  uni- 
versity and  competitive  examinations.  Moreover, 
it  is  necessary  to  set  a  definite  aim  of  application 
before  university  mathematical  teaching.     As  the 


156  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

first  condition  of  character-building  in  all  these 
things  the  student  should  do  what  he  ostensibly 
sets  out  to  do.  No  degree  and  no  position  should 
be  attainable  by  half  accomplishment. 

Of  course  languages  and  mathematics  do  not  by 
any  means  round  off  the  education  of  a  man  of  the 
leading  classes.  There  is  no  doubt  much  exercise 
in  their  attainment,  much  value  in  their  possession. 
But  the  essence  of  the  higher  education  is  now,  as 
it  always  has  been,  philosophy ;  not  the  antiquated 
pretence  of  "  reading  "  Plato  and  Aristotle,  but  the 
thorough  and  subtle  examination  of  those  great 
questions  of  life  that  most  exercise  and  strengthen 
the  mind.  Surely  that  is  the  essential  difference 
of  the  "  educated  "  and  the  "  common  "  man.  The 
former  has  thought  and  thought  out  thoroughly  and 
clearly  the  relations  of  his  mind  to  the  universe  as 
a  whole,  and  of  himself  to  the  State  and  life.  A 
mind  untrained  in  swift  and  adequate  criticism  is 
essentially  an  uneducated  mind,  though  it  has  as 
many  languages  as  a  courier  and  as  much  computa- 
tion as  a  bookie.  Our  fundamental  purpose  in  all 
this  reform  of  our  higher  education  is  neither 
knowledge  nor  technical  skill,  but  to  make  our 
young  men  talk  less  and  think  more,  and  to  think 
more  swiftly,  surely,  and  exactly ;  for  that  we  want 


THE  NEW  EDUCATION  157 

less  debating  society  and  more  philosophy,  fewer 
prizes  for  forensic  ability  and  more  for  strength 
and  vigour  of  analysis.  The  central  seat  of  char- 
acter is  the  mind.  A  man  of  weak  character  thinks 
vaguely,  a  man  of  clear  intellectual  decisions  acts 
with  precision  and  is  free  from  vacillation.  A 
country  of  educated  men  acts  coherently,  smites 
swiftly,  plans  ahead;  a  country  of  confused  edu- 
cation is  a  country  of  essential  muddle. 

It  is  as  the  third  factor  in  education  that  the 
handling  and  experience  of  knowledge  comes,  and 
of  all  knowledge  that  which  is  most  accessible, 
most  capable  of  being  handled  with  the  greatest 
variety  of  educational  benefit,  so  as  to  include  the 
criticism  of  evidence,  the  massing  of  facts,  the  ex- 
traction and  testing  of  generalisations,  lies  in  the 
two  groups  of  the  biological  sciences  and  the  exact 
sciences.  No  doubt  a  well-planned  system  of  edu- 
cation will  permit  of  much  varied  specialisation, 
will  indeed  specialise  those  who  have  special  gifts 
from  a  very  early  age,  will  have  corners  for  Greek, 
Hebrew,  Sanscrit, '  philology,  archaeology.  Chris- 
tian theology,  and  so  on  and  so  on ;  nevertheless  for 
that  great  mass  of  sound  men  of  indeterminate  all- 
round  ability  who  are  the  intellectual  and  moral 
backbone  of  a  nation,  it  is  in  scientific  studies  that 


158  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

their  best  training  lies,  studies  most  convenient  to 
undertake  and  most  readily  applied  in  life.  From 
either  of  the  two  groups  of  the  sciences  one  may 
pass  on  to  research  or  to  technical  applications 
leading  directly  to  the  public  service.  The  bio- 
logical sciences  broaden  out  through  psychology 
and  sociology  to  the  theory  and  practice  of  law,  and 
to  political  life.  They  lead  also  to  medical  and 
agricultural  administration.  The  exact  sciences 
lead  to  the  administrative  work  of  industrialism, 
and  to  general  economics. 

These  are  the  broad,  clear  lines  of  the  educational 
necessities  of  a  modern  community,  plain  enough 
to  see,  so  that  every  man  who  is  not  blinded  by  prej- 
udice and  self-interest  can  see  them  to-day.  We 
have  now  before  us  a  phase  of  opportunity  in  edu- 
cational organisation  that  will  never  recur  again. 
Now  that  the  apostolic  succession  of  the  old  peda- 
gogy is  broken,  and  the  entire  system  discredited, 
it  seems  incredible  that  it  can  ever  again  be  recon- 
stituted in  its  old  seats  upon  the  old  lines.  In 
these  raw,  harsh  days  of  boundless  opportunity,  the 
opportunity  of  the  new  education,  because  it  is  the 
most  fundamental,  is  assuredly  the  greatest  of  all. 


VIII 
WHAT   THE   WAR  IS   DOING  FOR  WOMEN 

§  1 

To  DISCUSS  the  effect  of  this  war  upon  the  relations 
of  men  and  women  to  each  other  is  to  enter  upon 
the  analysis  of  a  secular  process  compared  with 
which  even  the  vast  convulsions  and  destructions  of 
this  world  catastrophe  appear  only  as  jolts  and  in- 
cidents and  temporary  interruptions.     There  are 
certain  matters  that  sustain  a  perennial  develop- 
ment, that  are  on  a  scale  beyond  the  dramatic  hap- 
penings of  history;  wars,  the  movements  of  peo- 
ples and  races,  economic  changes,  such  things  may 
accelerate  or  stimulate  or  confuse  or  delay,  but  they 
cannot  arrest  the  endless  thinking  out,  the  growth 
and  perfecting  of  ideas,  upon  the  fundamental  re- 
lationships of  human  beings.     First  among  such 
eternally  progressive  issues  is  religion,  the  relation- 
ship of  man  to  God;  next  in  importance  and  still 
more  immediate  is  the  matter  of  men's  relations  to 
women.     In  such  matters  each   phase  is  a  new 
phase;  whatever  happens  there  is  no  going  back 
and  beginning  over  again.     The  social  life,  like  the 

159 


160  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

religious  life,  must  grow  and  change,  until  the  hu- 
man story  is  at  an  end. 

So  that  this  war  involves,  in  this  as  in  so  many 
matters,  no  fundamental  set-back,  no  reversals  nor 
restorations.  At  the  most  it  will  but  realise  things 
already  imagined,  release  things  latent.  The  nine- 
teenth century  was  a  period  of  unprecedented  modi- 
fication of  social  relationships,  but  great  as  these 
changes  were  they  were  trivial  in  comparison  with 
the  changes  in  religious  thought  and  the  criticism 
of  moral  ideals.  Hell  was  the  basis  of  religious 
thinking  in  A.  D.  1800,  and  the  hangman  was  at  the 
back  of  the  law ;  in  1900  both  Hell  and  the  hangman 
seemed  on  the  verge  of  extinction.  The  creative 
impulse  was  everywhere  replacing  fear  and  comj^nl- 
sion  in  human  motives.  The  opening  decade  of  the 
twentieth  century  was  a  period  of  unprecedented 
abundance  in  everything  necessary  to  human  life, 
of  vast  accumulated  resources,  of  leisure  and  re- 
lease. It  was  also,  because  of  that  and  because  of 
the  changed  social  and  religious  spirit,  a  period  of 
great  social  disorganisation  and  confused  impulses. 

We  British  can  already  look  back  to  the  opening 
half  of  1914  as  to  an  age  gone  for  ever.  Except 
that  we  were  all  alive  then  and  can  remember,  it 
has  become  now  almost  as  remote,  almost  as  "  his- 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN     161 

torical/'  as  the  days  before  the  French  Revolution. 
Our  days,  our  methods  and  reactions,  are  already 
so  different.  The  greater  part  of  the  freedom  of 
movement,  the  travel  and  going  to  and  fro,  the 
leisure,  the  plenty  and  carelessness,  that  distin- 
guished early  twentieth  century  life  from  early 
nineteenth  century  life,  has  disappeared.  Most 
men  are  under  military  discipline,  and  every  house- 
hold economises.  The  whole  British  people  has 
been  brought  up  against  such  elementary  realities 
of  need,  danger,  and  restraint  as  it  never  realised 
before.  We  discover  that  we  had  been  living  like 
Olympians  in  regard  to  worldly  affairs,  we  had 
been  irresponsibles,  amateurs.  Much  of  that  fat- 
ness of  life,  the  wrappings  and  trimmings  of  our 
life,  has  been  stripped  off  altogether.  That  has  not 
altered  the  bones  of  life;  it  has  only  made  them 
plainer ;  but  it  has  astonished  us  as  much  as  if  look- 
ing into  a  looking-glass  one  suddenly  found  oneself 
a  skeleton.     Or  a  diagram. 

What  was  going  on  before  this  war  in  the  rela- 
tions of  men  and  women  is  going  on  still,  with  more 
rapidity  perhaps,  and  certainly  with  more  thor- 
oughness. The  war  is  accentuating,  developing, 
defining.  Previously  our  discussions  and  poses 
and  movements  had  merely  the  air  of  seeking  to 


162  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

accentuate  and  define.  What  was  apparently  be- 
ing brought  about  by  discursive  efforts  and  in  a 
mighty  controversy  and  confusion,  is  coming  about 
now  as  a  matter  of  course. 

Before  the  war,  in  the  British  community  as  in 
most  civilised  communities,  profound  changes  were 
already  in  progress,  changes  in  the  conditions  of 
women's  employment,  in  the  political  status  of 
women,  in  the  status  of  illegitimate  children,  in 
manners  and  customs  affecting  the  sexes.  Every 
civilised  community  was  exhibiting  a  falling  birth 
rate  and  a  falling  death  rate,  was  changing  the 
quality  of  its  housing  and  diminishing  domestic 
labour  by  organising  supplies  and  developing  ap- 
pliances. That  is  to  say,  that  primary  human  unit, 
the  home,  was  altering  in  shape  and  size  and  fre- 
quency and  colour  and  effect.  A  steadily  increas- 
ing proportion  of  people  were  living  outside  the  old 
family  home,  the  home  based  on  maternity  and  off- 
spring, altogether.  A  number  of  us  were  doing  our 
best  to  apprehend  the  summation  of  all  this  flood  of 
change.  We  had  a  vague  idea  that  women  were 
somehow  being  "  emancipated,''  but  just  what  this 
word  meant  and  what  it  implied  were  matters  still 
under  exploration.     Then  came  the  war.     For  a 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      163 

time  it  seemed  as  if  all  this  discussion  was  at  an 
end,  as  if  the  problem  itself  had  vanished. 

But  that  was  only  a  temporary  distraction  of  at- 
tention. The  process  of  change  swirled  into  new 
forms  that  did  not  fit  very  easily  into  the  accepted 
formulae,  swirled  into  new  forms  and  continued  on 
its  way.  If  the  discussion  ceased  for  a  time,  the 
process  of  change  ceased  not  at  all.  Matters  have 
travelled  all  the  farther  in  the  last  two  years  for 
travelling  mutely.  The  questions  between  men 
and  women  are  far  more  important  and  far  more 
incessant  than  the  questions  betw^een  Germans  and 
the  rest  of  mankind.  They  are  coming  back  now 
into  the  foreground  of  human  thought,  but  amended 
and  altered.  Our  object  is  to  state  the  general  na- 
ture of  that  alteration.  It  has  still  been  "  emanci- 
pation,'' but  very  different  in  quality  from  the 
"  emancipation  ''  that  was  demanded  so  loudly  and 
incoherently  in  that  ancient  world  —  of  1913 ! 

Never  had  the  relations  of  men  and  women  been 
so  uneasy  as  they  were  in  the  opening  decades 
of  1914.  The  woman's  movement  battered  and 
banged  through  all  our  minds.  It  broke  out  into 
that  tumult  in  Great  Britain  perhaps  ten  years  ago. 
When  Queen  Victoria  died  it  was  inaudible ;  search 


164  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

Punch,  search  the  newspapers  of  that  tranquil  age. 
In  1914  it  kicked  up  so  great  a  dust  that  the  Ger- 
mans counted  on  the  Suffragettes  as  one  of  the 
great  forces  that  were  to  paralyse  England  in  the 
war.  The  extraordinary  thing  w^as  that  the  move- 
ment was  never  clearly  defined  during  all  the  time 
of  its  maximum  violence.  We  begin  to  perceive  in 
the  retrospect  that  the  movement  was  multiple, 
made  up  of  a  number  of  very  different  movements 
interwoven.  It  seemed  to  concentrate  upon  the 
Vote;  but  it  was  never  possible  to  find  even  why 
women  wanted  the  vote.  Some,  for  example,  al- 
leged that  it  was  because  they  w^ere  like  men,  and 
some  because  they  were  entirely  different.  The 
broad  facts  that  one  could  not  mistake  were  a  vast 
feminine  discontent  and  a  vast  display  of  feminine 
energy.     What  had  brought  that  about? 

Two  statistical  factors  are  to  be  considered  here. 
One  of  these  was  the  steady  decline  in  the  marriage 
rate,  and  the  increasing  proportion  of  unmarried 
women  of  all  classes,  but  particularly  of  the  more 
educated  classes,  requiring  employment.  The  sec- 
ond was  the  fall  in  the  birth  rate,  the  diminution  in 
size  of  the  average  family,  the  increase  of  sterile 
unions,  and  the  consequent  release  of  a  consider- 
able proportion  of  the  energy  of  married  women. 


WHAT  WAK  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      165 

Co-operating  with  these  factors  of  release  were  the 
economic  elaborations  that  were  improving  the  ap- 
pliances of  domestic  life,  replacing  the  needle  by 
the  sewing  machine,  the  coal  fire  and  lamp  by  gas 
and  electricity,  the  dustpan  and  brush  by  the  pneu- 
matic carpet  cleaner,  and  taking  out  of  the  house 
into  the  shop  and  factory,  the  baking,  much  of  the 
cooking,  the  making  of  clothes,  the  laundry  work, 
and  so  forth,  that  had  hitherto  kept  so  many  w^omen 
at  home  and  too  busy  to  think.  The  care  of  even 
such  children  as  there  were,  was  also  less  arduous ; 
creche  and  school  held  out  hands  for  them,  ready 
to  do  even  that  duty  better.  And  side  by  side  with 
these  releases  was  a  rise  in  the  standard  of  educa- 
tion that  w^as  stimulating  the  minds  and  imagina- 
tions of  woman  beyond  a  point  where  the  needle  — 
even  if  there  had  been  any  use  for  the  needle  —  can 
be  an  opiate.  Moreover,  the  world  was  growing 
richer,  and  growing  richer  in  such  a  way  that  not 
only  were  leisure  and  desire  increasing  but,  because 
of  increasingly  scientific  methods  of  production,  the 
need  in  many  branches  of  employment  for  any  but 
very  keen  and  able  workers  was  diminishing.  So 
that  simultaneously  the  world,  that  vanished  world 
before  1914,  was  releasing  and  disengaging  enor- 
mous volumes  of  untrained  and  unassigned  femi- 


166  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

nine  energy  and  also  diminishing  usefulness  of  un- 
skilful effort  in  every  department  of  life.  There 
was  no  demand  to  meet  the  supply.  These  were  the 
underlying  processes  that  produced  the  feminist 
outbreak  of  the  decade  before  the  war. 

Now  the  debate  between  the  sexes  is  a  perennial. 
It  began  while  we  were  still  in  the  trees.  It  has 
its  stereotyped  accusations;  its  stereotyped  repar- 
tees. The  Canterbury  Pilgrims  had  little  to  learn 
from  Christabel  Pankhurst.  Man  and  woman  in 
that  duet  struggle  perpetually  for  the  upper  hand, 
and  the  man  restrains  the  woman  and  the  woman 
resents  the  man.  In  every  age  some  voice  has  been 
heard  asserting,  like  Plato,  that  the  woman  is  a  hu- 
man being,  and  the  prompt  answer  has  been,  "  But 
such  a  different  human  being."  Wherever  there  is 
a  human  difference  fair  play  is  difficult;  the  uni- 
versal clash  of  races  witnesses  to  that,  and  sex  is 
the  greatest  of  human  differences. 

But  the  general  trend  of  mankind  towards  in- 
telligence and  reason  has  been  also  a  trend  away 
from  a  superstitious  treatment  of  sexual  ques- 
tions and  a  recognition,  so  to  speak,  that  a  woman's 
"  a  man  for  a'  that,"  that  she  is  indeed  as  entitled 
to  an  independent  soul  and  a  separate  voice  in  col- 
lective affairs.     As  brain  has  counted  for  more  and 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      167 

more  in  the  human  effort  and  brute  strength  and 
the  advantage  of  not  bearing  children  for  less  and 
less,  as  man  has  felt  a  greater  need  for  a  companion 
and  a  lesser  need  for  a  slave,  and  as  the  increase  of 
food  and  the  protection  of  the  girl  from  premature 
child-bearing  has  approximated  the  stature  and 
strength  and  enterprise  of  the  woman  more  and 
more  to  that  of  the  man,  this  secular  emancipation 
of  the  human  female  from  the  old  herd  subordina- 
tion and  servitude  to  the  patriarchal  male  has  gone 
on.  Essentially  the  secular  process  has  been  an 
equalising  process.  It  was  merely  the  exaggera- 
tion of  its  sustaining  causes  during  the  plenty  and 
social  and  intellectual  expansion  of  the  last  half 
century  that  had  stimulated  this  secular  process  to 
the  pitch  of  crisis. 

There  have  always  been  two  extreme  aspects  of 
the  sexual  debate.  There  have  always  been  the 
oversexed  women  who  wanted  to  be  treated  pri- 
marily as  women,  and  the  women  who  were  irri- 
tated and  bored  by  being  treated  primarily  as 
women.  There  have  always  been  those  women  who 
wanted  to  get,  like  Joan  of  Arc,  into  masculine  at- 
tire, and  the  school  of  the  "  mystical  darlings.'' 
There  have  always  been  the  women  who  wanted  to 
share  men's  work  and  the  women  who  wanted  to 


168  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

"  inspire "  it,  the  mates  and  the  mistresses.  Of 
course  the  mass  of  women  lies  between  these  ex- 
tremes. But  it  is  possible  nevertheless  to  discuss 
this  question  as  though  it  were  a  conflict  of  two 
sharply  opposed  ideals.  It  is  convenient  to  write 
as  if  there  were  just  these  two  sorts  of  women  be- 
cause so  one  can  get  a  sharp  definition  in  the  pic- 
ture. The  ordinary  woman  fluctuates  between  the 
two,  turns  now  to  the  Western  ideal  of  citizenship 
and  now  to  the  Eastern  of  submission.  These 
ideals  fight  not  only  in  human  society  but  in  every 
woman's  career.  Chitra  in  Kabindra  Nath  Tagore's 
play,  for  example,  tried  both  aspects  of  the  wom- 
an's life,  and  Tagore  is  at  one  with  Plato  in  pre- 
ferring the  Rosalind  type  to  the  houri.  And  with 
him  I  venture  to  think  is  the  clear  reason  of  man- 
kind. The  real  "  emancipation  "  to  which  reason 
and  the  trend  of  things  makes  is  from  the  yielding 
to  the  energetic  side  of  a  woman's  disposition,  from 
beauty  enthroned  for  love  towards  the  tall,  weather- 
hardened  woman  with  a  spear,  loving  her  mate  as 
her  mate  loves  her,  and  as  sexless  as  a  man  in  all 
her  busy  hours. 

But  it  was  not  simply  the  energies  that  tended 
towards  this  particular  type  that  were  set  free  dur- 
ing  the    latter    half    of    the    nineteenth    century. 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      169 

Every  sort  of  feminine  energy  was  set  free.  And 
it  was  not  merely  the  self-reliant,  independence- 
seeking  women  who  were  discontented.  The  ladies 
who  specialised  in  feminine  arts  and  graces  and 
mysteries  were  also  dissatisfied.  They  found  they 
were  not  important  enough.  The  former  type 
found  itself  insufficiently  respected,  and  the  latter 
type  found  itself  insufiSciently  adored.  The  two 
mingled  their  voices  in  the  most  confusing  way  in 
the  literature  of  the  suffrage  movement  before  the 
war.  The  two  tendencies  mingle  confusingly  in  the 
minds  of  the  women  that  this  movement  was  stir- 
ring up  to  think.  The  Vote  became  the  symbol  for 
absolutely  contradictory  things ;  there  is  scarcely  a 
single  argument  for  it  in  suffragist  literature  that 
cannot  be  completely  negatived  out  of  suffragist 
literature. 

For  example,  compare  the  writings  of  Miss  Cicely 
Hamilton,  the  distinguished  actress,  with  the  pub- 
lications of  the  Pankhurst  family.  The  former  ex- 
presses a  claim  that,  except  for  prejudice,  a  woman 
is  as  capable  a  citizen  as  a  man  and  differing  only 
in  her  sex;  the  latter  consist  of  a  long  rhapsody 
upon  the  mystical  superiorities  of  women  and  the 
marvellous  benefits  mankind  will  derive  from  hand- 
ing   things    over    to    these    sacred    powers.     The 


170  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

former  would  get  rid  of  sex  from  most  human  af- 
fairs; the  latter  would  make  what  our  Georgian 
grandfathers  called  "  The  Sex "  rule  the  world. 
Or  compare  the  dark  coquettings  of  Miss  Elizabeth 
Kobins'  Woman's  Secret  with  the  virile  common- 
sense  of  that  most  brilliant  young  writer,  Miss  Ee- 
becca  West,  in  her  bitter  onslaught  on  feminine 
limitations,  in  the  opening  chapters  of  The  World's 
Worst  Failure.  The  former  is  an  extravagance  of 
sexual  mysticism.  Man  can  never  understand 
women.  Women  always  hide  deep  and  wonderful 
things  away  beyond  masculine  discovery.  Men  do 
not  even  suspect.  Some  day  perhaps —  It  is 
some  one  peeping  from  behind  a  curtain,  and  invit- 
ing men  in  provocative  tones  to  come  and  play  catch 
in  a  darkened  harem.  The  latter  is  like  some  gal- 
lant soldier  cursing  his  silly  accoutrements.  It  is 
a  hearty  outbreak  against  that  apparent  necessity 
for  elegance  and  sexual  specialisation  that  under- 
cuts so  much  feminine  achievement,  that  reduces  so 
much  feminine  art  and  writing  to  vapidity  and 
holds  back  women  from  the  face  of  danger  and 
brave  and  horrible  deaths.  It  is  West  to  Miss 
Robins'  East.  And  yet  I  believe  I  am  right  in  say- 
ing that  all  these  four  women  writers  have  jostled 
one  another  upon  suffrage  platforms,  and  that  they 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      171 

all  suffered  blows  and  injuries  in  the  same  cause, 
during  the  various  riots  and  conflicts  that  occurred 
in  London  in  the  course  of  the  great  agitation.  It 
was  only  when  the  agitation  of  the  Pankhurst 
family,  aided  by  Miss  Robins'  remarkable  book. 
Where  are  you  Going  To?  took  a  form  that  threat- 
ened to  impose  the  most  extraordinary  restrictions 
on  the  free  movements  of  women,  and  to  establish  a 
sort  of  universal  purdah  of  hostility  and  suspicion 
against  those  degraded  creatures,  those  stealers  and 
destroyers  of  women,  "  the  men,"  that  the  British 
feminist  movement  displayed  any  tendency  to  dis- 
sociate into  its  opposed  and  divergent  strands. 

It  is  a  little  detail,  but  a  very  significant  one  in 
this  connection,  that  the  committee  that  organised 
the  various  great  suffrage  processions  in  London 
were  torn  by  dispute  about  the  dresses  of  the  pro- 
cessionists. It  was  urged  that  a  "  masculine  style 
of  costume  "  discredited  the  movement,  and  women 
were  urged  to  dress  with  a  maximum  of  feminine 
charm.  Many  women  obtained  finery  they  could  ill 
afford,  to  take  part  in  these  demonstrations,  and 
minced  their  steps  as  womanly  as  possible  to  free- 
dom. ... 

It  would  be  easy  to  overstate  the  efflorescence  of 
distinctively  feminine  emotion,  dressiness,  mysti- 


172  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

cism,  and  vanity  upon  the  suffrage  movement. 
Those  things  showed  for  any  one  to  see.  This  was 
the  froth  of  the  whirlpool.  What  did  not  show 
was  the  tremendous  development  of  the  sense  of 
solidarity  among  women.  Everybody  knew  that 
women  had  been  hitting  policemen  at  Westminster ; 
it  was  not  nearly  so  showy  a  fact  that  women  of 
title,  working  w^omen,  domestic  servants,  trades- 
men's wives,  professional  w^orkers,  had  all  been 
meeting  together  and  working  together  in  a  com- 
mon cause,  working  with  an  unprecedented  capacity 
and  an  unprecedented  disregard  of  social  barriers. 
One  noted  the  nonsensical  byplay  of  the  move- 
ment; the  way  in  which  women  were  accustoming 
themselves  to  higher  standards  of  achievement  was 
not  so  immediately  noticeable.  That  a  small  num- 
ber of  women  were  apparently  bent  on  rendering 
the  Vote  impossible  by  a  campaign  of  violence  and 
malicious  mischief,  very  completely  masked  the  fact 
that  a  very  great  number  of  girls  and  young  women 
no  longer  considered  it  seemly  to  hang  about  at 
home  trying  by  a  few  crude  inducements  to  tempt 
men  to  marry  them,  but  were  setting  out  very  seri- 
ously and  capably  to  master  the  young  man's  way 
of  finding  a  place  for  oneself  in  the  world.  Be- 
neath  the  dust  and  noise  realities   were  coming 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      173 

about  that  the  dust  and  noise  entirely  failed  to  rep- 
resent. We  know  that  some  women  were  shriek- 
ing for  the  Vote ;  we  did  not  realise  that  a  genera- 
tion of  women  was  qualifying  for  it. 

The  war  came,  the  jolt  of  an  earthquake,  to  throw 
things  into  their  proper  relationships. 

The  immediate  result  was  the  disappearance  of 
the  militant  suffragists  from  public  view  for  a  time, 
into  which  the  noisier  section  hastened  to  emerge 
in  full  scream  upon  the  congenial  topic  of  War 
Babies.  "  Men,"  those  dreadful  creatures,  were 
being  camped  and  quartered  all  over  the  country. 
It  followed  from  all  the  social  principles  known  to 
Mrs.  and  Miss  Pankhurst  that  it  w^as  necessary  to 
provide  for  an  enormous  number  of  W^ar  Babies. 
Subscriptions  were  invited.  Statisticians  are  still 
looking  rather  perplexedly  for  those  War  Babies; 
the  illegitimate  birth  rate  has  fallen,  and  what  has 
become  of  the  subscriptions  I  do  not  know.  The 
''  Suffragette  '^  rechristened  itself  "  Britannia,'' 
dropped  the  War  Baby  agitation,  and  after  an  in- 
terlude of  self-control,  broke  out  into  denunciations 
first  of  this  public  servant  and  then  of  that,  as 
traitors  and  German  spies.  Finally  it  discovered 
a  mare's  nest  in  the  case  of  Sir  Edward  Grey  that 
led  to  its  suppression,  and  the  last  I  have  from  this 


174  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

misleading  and  unrepresentative  feminist  faction  is 
the  periodic  appearance  of  a  little  ill-printed  sheet 
of  abuse  about  the  chief  Foreign  Office  people,  re- 
sembling in  manner  and  appearance  the  sort  of  de- 
nunciatory letter,  at  once  suggestive  and  evasive, 
that  might  be  written  by  the  curate's  discharged 
cook.  And  with  that  the  aggressive  section  of  the 
suffragist  movement  seems  to  have  petered  out, 
leaving  the  broad  reality  of  feminine  emancipation 
to  go  on  in  a  beneficent  silence. 

There  can  be  no  question  that  the  behaviour  of 
the  great  mass  of  women  in  Great  Britain  has  not 
simply  exceeded  expectation  but  hope.  And  there 
can  be  as  little  doubt  that  the  suffrage  question, 
in  spite  of  the  self-advertising  violence  of  its  ex- 
travagant section,  did  contribute  very  materially  to 
build  up  the  confidence,  the  willingness  to  under- 
take responsibility  and  face  hardship,  that  has  been 
so  abundantly  displayed  by  every  class  of  woman. 
It  is  not  simply  that  there  has  been  enough  women 
and  to  spare  for  hospital  work  and  every  sort  of  re- 
lief and  charitable  service;  that  sort  of  thing  has 
been  done  before,  that  was  in  the  tradition  of  wom- 
anhood. It  is  that  at  every  sort  of  occupation, 
clerking,  shop-keeping,  railway  work,  automobile 
driving,  agricultural  work,  police  work,  they  have 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      175 

been  found  efficient  beyond  precedent  and  intelli- 
gent beyond  precedent.  And  in  the  munition  fac- 
tories, in  the  handling  of  heavy  and  often  difficult 
machinery,  and  in  adaptability  and  inventiveness 
and  enthusiasm  and  steadfastness,  their  achieve- 
ment has  been  astonishing.  More  particularly  in 
relation  to  intricate  mechanical  work  is  their  rec- 
ord remarkable  and  unexpected.  There  is  scarcely 
a  point  where  women,  having  been  given  a  chance, 
have  not  more  than  made  good.  They  have  revo- 
lutionised the  estimate  of  their  economic  impor- 
tance, and  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  when 
in  the  long  run  the  military  strength  of  the  Allies 
bears  down  the  strength  of  Germany,  it  will  be  this 
superiority  of  our  women  which  enables  us  to  pit 
a  woman  at  —  the  Censorship  will  object  to  exact 
geography  upon  this  point  —  against  a  man  at  Es- 
sen, which  has  tipped  the  balance  of  this  war. 

Those  women  have  won  the  vote.  Not  the  most 
frantic  outbursts  of  militancy  after  this  war  can 
prevent  them  getting  it.  The  girls  who  have  faced 
death  and  wounds  so  gallantly  in  our  cordite  fac- 
tories —  there  is  a  not  inconsiderable  list  of  dead 
and  wounded  from  those  places  —  have  killed  for 
ever  the  poor  argument  that  women  should  not  vote 
because  they  had  no  military  value.     Indeed  they 


176  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

have  killed  every  argument  against  their  subjection. 
And  while  they  do  these  things,  that  paragon  of 
the  virtues  of  the  old  type,  that  miracle  of  do- 
mestic obedience,  the  German  haus-frau,  the  faith- 
ful Gretchen,  riots  for  butter. 

And  as  I  have  before  remarked,  the  Germans 
counted  on  the  suffragettes  as  one  of  the  great 
forces  that  were  to  paralyse  England  in  this  war. 

It  is  not  simply  that  the  British  women  have  so 
bountifully  produced  intelligence  and  industry; 
that  does  not  begin  their  record.  They  have  been 
willing  to  go  dowdy.  The  mass  of  women  in  Great 
Britain  are  wearing  the  clothes  of  1914.  In  1913 
every  girl  and  woman  one  saw  in  the  streets  of  Lon- 
don had  an  air  of  doing  her  best  to  keep  in  the 
fashion.  Now  they  are  for  the  most  part  as  care- 
lessly dressed  as  a  busy  business  man  or  a  clever 
young  student  might  have  been.  They  are  none  the 
less  pretty  for  that,  and  far  more  beautiful.  But 
the  fashions  have  floated  away  to  absurdity.  Every 
now  and  then  through  the  austere  bustle  of  London 
in  war  time  drifts  a  last  practitioner  of  the  "  eter- 
nal feminine  '' —  with  the  air  of  a  foreign  visitor, 
with  the  air  of  devotion  to  some  peculiar  cult.  She 
has  very  high-heeled  boots ;  she  shows  a  leg,  she  has 
a  skimpy  skirt  with  a  peculiar  hang,  due  no  doubt 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      177 

to  mysteries  about  the  waist;  she  wears  a  comic 
little  hat  over  one  brow;  there  is  something  of  Co- 
lumbine about  her,  something  of  the  Watteau  shep- 
herdess, something  of  a  vivandiere,  something  of 
every  age  but  the  present  age.  Her  face,  subject  to 
the  strange  dictates  of  the  mode,  is  smooth  like  the 
back  of  a  spoon,  with  small  features  and  little  whis- 
ker-like curls  before  the  ears  such  as  butcher-boys 
used  to  wear  half  a  century  ago.  Even  so,  she  dare 
not  do  this  thing  alone.  Something  in  khaki  is 
with  her,  to  justify  her.  You  are  to  understand 
that  this  strange  rig  is  for  seeing  him  off  or  giving 
him  a  good  time  during  his  leave.  Sometimes  she 
is  quite  elderly,  sometimes  nothing  khaki  is  to  be 
got,  and  the  pretence  that  this  is  desired  of  her 
wears  thin.     Still,  the  type  will  out. 

She  does  not  pass  wdth  impunity,  the  last  ex- 
ponent of  true  feminine  charm.  The  vulgar,  the 
street  boy,  have  evolved  one  of  those  strange  say- 
ings that  have  the  air  of  being  fragments  from  some 
lost  and  forgotten  chant : 

"  She's  the  Army  Contractor's  Only  Daughter, 
Spending  it  now." 

Or  simply,  "  Spending  it  now." 
She  does  not  pass  with  impunity,  but  she  passes. 
She  makes  her  stilted  passage  across  the  arena  upon 


178  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

which  the  new  womanhood  of  western  Europe 
shows  its  worth.  It  is  an  exit.  There  is  likely  to 
be  something  like  a  truce  in  the  fashions  through- 
out Europe  for  some  years.  It  is  in  America  if 
anywhere  that  the  holy  fires  of  smartness  and  the 
fashion  will  be  kept  alive.  .  .  . 

And  so  we  come  to  prophecy. 

I  do  not  believe  that  this  invasion  by  women  of  a 
hundred  employments  hitherto  closed  to  them  is  a 
temporary  arrangement  that  will  be  reversed  after 
the  w^ar.  It  is  a  thing  that  was  going  on,  very 
slowly  it  is  true  and  against  much  prejudice  and 
opposition,  before  the  war,  but  it  was  going  on;  it 
is  in  the  nature  of  things.  These  women  no  doubt 
enter  these  employments  as  substitutes,  but  not 
usually  as  inferior  substitutes;  in  quite  a  number 
of  cases  they  are  as  good  as  men,  and  in  many  they 
are  not  underselling,  they  are  drawing  men's  pay. 
What  reason  is  there  to  suppose  that  they  will  re- 
lapse into  a  state  of  superfluous  energy  after  the 
war?  The  war  has  merely  brought  about,  with  the 
rapidity  of  a  landslide,  a  state  of  affairs  for  which 
the  world  was  ripe.  The  world  after  the  war  will 
have  to  adjust  itself  to  this  extension  of  women's 
employment,  and  to  this  increase  in  the  proportion 
of  self-respecting,  self-supporting  women. 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      179 

Contributing  very  largely  to  the  establishment 
of  this  greatly  enlarged  class  of  independent  women 
will  be  the  great  shortage  for  the  next  decade  of 
marriageable  men,  due  to  the  killing  and  disable- 
ment of  the  war.  The  women  of  the  next  decades 
will  not  only  be  able  to  get  along  economically  with- 
out marriage,  but  they  will  find  it  much  more  diffi- 
cult to  marry.  It  will  also  probably  be  a  period  in 
which  a  rise  in  prices  may,  as  it  usually  does,  pre- 
cede the  compensating  rise  in  wages.  It  may  be 
that  for  some  years  it  will  be  more  difficult  to  main- 
tain a  family.  This  will  be  a  third  factor  in  the 
fixation  of  this  class  of  bachelor  women. 

Various  writers,  brooding  over  the  coming  short- 
age of  men,  have  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that 
polygamy  is  among  the  probabilities  of  the  near  fu- 
ture. They  write  in  terms  of  real  or  affected  alarm 
for  which  there  is  no  justification ;  they  wallow  in 
visions  of  Germany  "  legalising  "  polygamy,  and  see 
Berlin  seeking  recuperation  in  man  power  by  con- 
verting herself  into  another  Salt  Lake  City.  But 
I  do  not  think  that  Germany  in  the  face  of  the 
economic  ring  that  the  Allies  will  certainly  draw 
about  her  is  likely  to  desire  a  very  great  increase 
in  population  for  the  next  few  years ;  I  do  not  see 
any  great  possibility  of  a  specially  rich  class  ca- 


180  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

pable  of  maintaining  numerous  wives  being  sus- 
tained by  the  impoverished  and  indebted  world  of 
Europe,  nor  the  sources  from  which  a  supply  of 
women  preferring  to  become  constituents  in  a 
polygamous  constellation  rather  than  self-support- 
ing free  women,  is  to  be  derived.  The  tempera- 
mental dislike  of  intelligent  women  to  polygamy  is 
at  least  as  strong  as  a  man's  objection  to  poly- 
andry. Polygamy,  open  or  hidden,  flourishes 
widely  only  where  there  are  women  to  be  bought. 
Moreover,  there  are  considerable  obstacles  in  reli- 
gion and  custom  to  be  overcome  by  the  innovating 
polygamist  —  even  in  Germany.  It  might  mean  a 
breach  of  the  present  good  relations  between  Ger- 
many and  the  Vatican.  The  relative  inferiority  of 
the  tradition  of  the  German  to  that  of  most  other 
European  women,  its  relative  disposition  towards 
feminine  servitude,  is  no  doubt  a  consideration  on 
the  other  scale  of  this  discussion,  but  I  do  not 
think  it  is  one  heavy  enough  to  tilt  back  the  beam. 
So  far  from  a  great  number  of  men  becoming 
polygamists,  I  think  it  would  be  possible  to  show 
cause  for  supposing  that  an  increasing  proportion 
will  cease  even  to  be  monogamists.  The  romantic 
excitements  of  the  war  have  produced  a  temporary 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      181 

rise  in  the  British  marriage  rate;  but  before  the 
war  it  had  been  falling  slowly  and  the  average  age 
at  marriage  had  been  rising,  and  it  is  quite  possible 
that  this  process  will  be  presently  resumed  and,  as 
a  new  generation  grows  up  to  restore  the  balance 
of  the  sexes,  accelerated. 

We  conclude  therefore  that  this  increase  in  the 
class  of  economically  independent  bachelor  women 
that  is  now  taking  place  is  a  permanent  increase. 
It  is  probably  being  reinforced  by  a  considerable 
number  of  war  widows  who  will  not  remarry.  We 
have  to  consider  in  what  directions  this  mass  of 
capable,  intelligent,  energetic,  undomesticated  free- 
women  is  likely  to  develop,  what  its  effect  will  be 
on  social  usage,  and  particularly  how  it  will  react 
upon  the  lives  of  the  married  women  about  them. 
Because,  as  we  have  already  pointed  out  in  this 
paper,  the  release  of  feminine  energy  upon  which 
the  feminist  problem  depends,  is  twofold,  being  due 
not  only  to  the  increased  unmarriedness  of  women 
through  the  disproportion  of  the  sexes  and  the  rise 
in  the  age  of  marriage  but  also  to  the  decreased 
absorption  of  married  women  in  domestic  duties. 
A  woman,  from  the  point  of  view  of  this  discussion, 
is  not  "  married  and  done  for  "  as  she  used  to  be. 


182  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

She  is  not  so  extensively  and  completely  married. 
Her  large  and  increasing  leisure  remains  in  the 
problem. 

The  influence  of  this  coming  body  of  freewomen 
upon  the  general  social  atmosphere  will  be,  I  ven- 
ture to  think,  liberalising  and  relaxing  in  certain 
directions  and  very  bracing  in  others.  This  new 
type  of  women  will  want  to  go  about  freely  without 
an  escort,  to  be  free  to  travel  alone,  take  rooms  in 
hotels,  sit  in  restaurants,  and  so  forth.  Now,  as 
the  women  of  the  past  decade  showed,  there  are  for  a 
woman  two  quite  antagonistic  ways  of  going  about 
alone.  Nothing  showed  the  duplicate  nature  of  the 
suffragist  movement  more  than  the  great  variety 
of  deportment  of  w^omen  in  the  London  streets  dur- 
ing that  time.  There  were  types  that  dressed 
neatly  and  quietly  and  went  upon  their  business 
with  intent  and  preoccupied  faces.  Their  inten- 
tion was  to  mingle  as  unobtrusively  as  possible  into 
the  stream  of  business,  to  be  as  far  as  possible  for 
the  ordinary  purposes  of  traffic  "  men  in  a  world 
of  men.''  A  man  could  speak  to  such  women  as  he 
spoke  to  another  man,  without  suspicion,  could  for 
example  ask  his  way  and  be  directed  without  being 
charged  with  annoying  or  accosting  a  delicate  fe- 
male.    At  the  other  extreme  there  w^as  a  type  of 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      183 

young  woman  who  came  into  the  streets  like  some- 
thing precious  that  has  got  loose.  It  dressed  itself 
as  feminine  loveliness ;  it  carried  sex  like  a  banner 
and  like  a  challenge.  Its  mind  was  fully  prepared 
by  the  Pankhurst  literature  for  insult.  It  swept 
past  distressed  manhood  imputing  motives.  It  was 
pure.hareem,  and  the  perplexed  masculine  intelli- 
gence could  never  determine  whether  it  was  out  for 
a  demonstration  or  whether  it  was  out  for  a  spree. 
Its  motives  in  thus  marching  across  the  path  of 
feminine  emancipation  were  probably  more  com- 
plicated and  confused  than  that  alternative  sug- 
gests, and  sheer  vanity  abounded  in  the  mixture. 
But  undoubtedly  that  extremity  is  the  vanishing  ex- 
tremity of  these  things.  The  new  freewoman  is 
going  to  be  a  grave  and  capable  being,  soberly 
dressed  and  imposing  her  own  decency  and  neutral- 
ity of  behaviour  upon  the  men  she  meets.  And 
along  the  line  of  sober  costume  and  simple  and  re- 
strained behaviour  that  the  freewoman  is  marking: 
out,  the  married  woman  will  also  escape  to  new 
measures  of  freedom. 

I  do  not  believe  that  among  women  of  the  same 
social  origins  and  the  same  educational  quality 
there  can  exist  side  by  side  entirely  distinct  schools 
of  costume,  deportment  and  behaviour,  based  on 


184  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

entirely  divergent  views  of  life.  I  do  not  think  that 
men  can  be  trained  to  differentiate  between  differ- 
ent sorts  of  women,  sorts  of  women  they  will  often 
be  meeting  simultaneously,  and  to  treat  this  one 
with  frankness  and  fellowship  and  that  one  with 
awe  and  passion  and  romantic  old-world  gallantry. 
All  sorts  of  intermediate  types  —  the  majority  of 
women  will  be  intermediate  types  —  will  compli- 
cate the  problem.  This  conflict  of  the  citizen- 
woman  ideal  with  the  loveliness-woman  ideal, 
which  was  breaking  out  very  plainly  in  the  British 
suffrage  movement  before  the  war,  will  certainly 
return  after  the  war,  and  I  have  little  doubt  which 
way  the  issue  will  fall.  The  human  being  is  going 
to  carry  it  against  the  sexual  being.  The  struggle 
is  going  to  be  extensive  and  various  and  prolonged, 
but  in  the  serious  years  ahead,  the  serious  type  will 
win.  The  plain  well-made  dress  will  oust  the  rib- 
bon and  the  decolletage. 

In  every  way  the  war  is  accelerating  the  emanci- 
pation of  women  from  sexual  specialisation.  It  is 
facilitating  their  economic  emancipation.  It  is 
liberating  types  that  will  inevitably  destroy  both 
the  "  atmosphere  of  gallantry  ''  which  is  such  a  bar 
to  friendliness  between  people  of  opposite  sexes, 
and  that  atmosphere  of  hostile  distrust  which  is  itti 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      185 

counterpart  in  the  minds  of  the  oversexual  suffra- 
gettes. It  is  arresting  the  change  of  fashions  and 
simplifying  manners.  In  another  way  also  it  is 
working  to  the  same  end.  That  fall  in  the  birth 
rate  which  has  been  so  marked  a  feature  in  the 
social  development  of  all  modern  States,  has  become 
much  more  perceptible  since  the  war  began  to  tell 
upon  domestic  comfort.  There  is  a  full-cradle  agi- 
tation going  on  in  Germany  to  check  this  decline; 
German  mothers  are  being  urged  not  to  leave  the 
Crown  Prince  of  1930  or  1940  without  the  necessary 
material  for  glory  at  some  fresh  Battle  of  Verdun. 
I  doubt  the  zeal  of  their  response.  But  everywhere 
the  war  signifies  economic  stress  which  must  nec- 
essarily continue  long  after  the  war  is  over,  and  in 
the  present  state  of  knowledge  that  stress  means 
fewer  children.  The  family,  already  light,  will 
grow  lighter.  This  means  that  marriage,  although 
it  may  be  by  no  means  less  emotionally  sacred,  will 
become  a  lighter  thing.  Once,  to  be  married  was 
a  woman's  whole  career.  Household  cares,  a  dozen 
children,  and  she  was  consumed.  All  her  romances 
ended  in  marriage.  All  a  decent  man's  romance 
ended  there  too.  She  proliferated  and  he  toiled, 
and  when  the  married  couple  had  brought  up  some 
of  their  children  and  buried  the  others  and  blessed 


186  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

their  first  grandchildren,  life  was  over.  Now  to  be 
married  is  an  incident  in  a  woman's  career  as  in  a 
man's.  There  is  not  the  same  necessity  of  that 
household,  not  the  same  close  tie;  the  married 
woman  remains  partially  a  freewoman  and  assimi- 
lates herself  to  the  freewoman.  There  is  an  in- 
creasing disposition  to  group  solitary  children  and 
to  delegate  their  care  to  specially  qualified  people, 
and  this  is  likely  to  increase  because  the  high  earn- 
ing power  of  young  women  w^ill  incline  them  to 
entrust  their  children  to  others  and  because  a  short- 
age of  men  and  an  excess  of  widows  will  supply 
other  women  willing  to  undertake  that  care.  The 
more  foolish  women  will  take  these  releases  as  a 
release  into  levity,  but  the  commonsense  of  the 
newer  types  of  women  will  come  to  the  help  of  men 
in  recognising  the  intolerable  nuisance  of  this  pro- 
longation of  flirting  and  charming  on  the  part  of 
people  who  have  had  what  should  be  a  satisfying 
love.  And  there  will  be  not  much  wealth  or  super- 
fluity to  make  levity  possible  and  desirable.  Win- 
some weak  womanhood  will  be  told  bluntly  by  men 
and  women  alike  that  it  is  a  bore.  The  frou-frou 
of  skirts,  the  delicate  mysteries  of  the  toilette,  will 
cease  to  thrill  any  but  the  very  young  men.  Mar- 
riage, deprived  of  its  bonds  of  material  necessity, 


WHAT  WAR  IS  DOING  FOR  WOMEN      187 

will  demand  a  closer  and  closer  companionship  as 
its  justification  and  excuse.  A  marriage  that  does 
not  ripen  into  a  close  personal  friendship  between 
two  equals,  will  be  regarded  with  increasing  def- 
initeness  as  an  unsatisfactory  marriage. 

These  things  are  not  stated  here  as  being  desir- 
able or  undesirable.  This  is  merely  an  attempt  to 
estimate  the  drift  and  tendency  of  the  time  as  it 
has  been  accentuated  by  the  war.  It  works  out  to 
the  realisation  that  marriage  is  likely  to  count  for 
less  and  less  as  a  state  and  for  more  and  more  as 
a  personal  relationship.  It  is  likely  to  be  an  affair 
of  diminishing  public  and  increasing  private  im- 
portance. People  who  marry  are  likely  to  remain, 
so  far  as  practical  ends  go,  more  detached  and 
separable.  The  essential  link  will  be  the  love  and 
affection  and  not  the  home. 

With  that  go  certain  logical  consequences.  The 
first  is  that  the  circumstances  of  the  unmarried 
mother  will  resemble  more  than  they  have  hitherto 
done  those  of  many  married  mothers;  the  harsh 
lines  once  drawn  between  them  will  dissolve.  This 
will  fall  in  with  the  long  manifest  tendency  in 
modern  society  to  lighten  the  disadvantages  (in 
the  case  of  legacy  duties,  for  example)  and  stigma 
laid  upon  illegitimate  children.     And  a  type  of 


188  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

marriage  where  personal  compatibility  has  come  to 
be  esteemed  the  fundamental  thing,  will  be  alto- 
gether more  amenable  to  divorce  than  the  old  union 
which  was  based  upon  the  kitchen  and  the  nursery, 
and  the  absence  of  any  care,  education,  or  security 
for  children  beyond  the  range  of  the  parental 
household.  Marriage  will  not  only  be  lighter  but 
more  dissoluble.  .  .  . 

To  summarise  all  that  has  gone  before :  this  war 
is  accelerating  rather  than  deflecting  the  stream  of 
tendency,  and  is  bringing  us  rapidly  to  a  state  of 
affairs  in  which  women  will  be  much  more  definitely 
independent  of  their  sexual  status,  much  less  ham- 
pered in  their  self-development,  and  much  more 
nearly  equal  to  men,  than  has  ever  been  known  be- 
fore in  the  whole  history  of  mankind.  .  .  . 


IX 

THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE 

§  1 

In  this  chapter  it  is  proposed  to  embark  upon  what 
may  seem  now,  with  the  Great  War  still  in  prog- 
ress and  still  undecided,  the  most  hopeless  of  all 
prophetic  adventures.  This  is  to  speculate  upon 
the  redrawing  of  the  map  of  Europe  after  the  war. 
But  because  the  detailed  happenings  and  exact  cir- 
cumstances of  the  ending  of  the  war  are  uncertain, 
they  need  not  alter  the  inevitable  broad  conclusion. 
I  have  already  discussed  that  conclusion,  and 
pointed  out  that  the  war  has  become  essentially  a 
war  of  mutual  exhaustion.  This  does  not  mean, 
as  some  hasty  readers  may  assume,  that  I  foretell 
a  "  draw.''  We  may  be  all  white  and  staggering, 
but  Germany  is,  I  believe,  fated  to  go  down  first. 
She  will  make  the  first  advances  towards  peace; 
she  will  ultimately  admit  defeat. 

But  I  do  want  to  insist  that  by  that  time  every 
belligerent,  and  not  simply  Germany,  will  be  ex- 
hausted   to    a    pitch    of    extreme    reasonableness. 

189 


190  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

There  will  be  no  power  left  as  Germany  was  left  in 
1871,  in  a  state  of  "  freshness  "  and  a  dictatorial 
attitude.  That  is  to  saj  they  will  all  be  gravitat- 
ing, not  to  triumphs,  but  to  such  a  settlement  as 
seems  to  promise  the  maximum  of  equilibrium  in 
the  future. 

If  towards  the  end  of  the  war  the  United  States 
should  decide,  after  all,  to  abandon  their  pres- 
ent attitude  of  superior  comment  and  throAV  their 
weight  in  favour  of  such  a  settlement  as  would 
make  the  recrudescence  of  militarism  impossible, 
the  general  exhaustion  may  give  America  a  rela- 
tive importance  far  beyond  any  influence  she  could 
exert  at  the  present  time.  In  the  end,  America 
may  have  the  power  to  insist  upon  almost  vital 
conditions  in  the  settlement;  though  whether  she 
will  have  the  imaginative  force  and  will  is,  of 
course,  quite  another  question. 

And  before  I  go  on  to  speculate  about  the  ac- 
tual settlement,  there  are  one  or  two  generalisa- 
tions that  it  may  be  interesting  to  try  over.  Law 
is  a  thin  wash  that  we  paint  over  the  firm  outlines 
of  reality,  and  the  treaties  and  agreements  of 
emperors  and  kings  and  statesmen  have  little  of 
the  permanence  of  certain  more  fundamental 
human  realities.     I  was  looking  the  other  day  at 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  191 

Sir  Mark  Sykes'  The  CalipWs  Inheritance,  which 
contains  a  series  of  coloured  maijs  of  the  political 
boundaries  of  southwestern  Asia  for  the  last  three 
thousand  years.  The  shapes  and  colours  come  and 
go  —  now  it  is  Persia,  now  it  is  Macedonia,  now  the 
Eastern  Empire,  now  the  Arab,  now  the  Turk  who 
is  ascendent.  The  colours  change  as  if  they  were 
in  a  kaleidoscope ;  they  advance,  recede,  split,  van- 
ish. But  through  all  that  time  there  exists  ob- 
stinately an  Armenia,  an  essential  Persia,  an 
Arabia;  they,  too,  advance  or  recede  a  little.  I  do 
not  claim  that  they  are  eternal  things,  but  they 
are  far  more  permanent  things  than  any  rulers  or 
empires;  they  are  rooted  to  the  ground  by  a  peas- 
antry, by  a  physical  and  temperamental  attitude. 
Apart  from  political  maps  of  mankind,  there  are 
natural  maps  of  mankind.  I  find  it,  too,  in  Eu- 
rope; the  monarchs  splash  the  water  and  break  up 
the  mirror  in  endless  strange  shapes ;  nevertheless, 
always  it  is  tending  back  to  its  enduring  forms ;  al- 
ways it  is  gravitating  back  to  a  Spain,  to  a  Gaul, 
to  an  Italy,  to  a  Serbo-Croatia,  to  a  Bulgaria,  to  a 
Germany,  to  a  Poland.  Poland  and  Armenia  and 
Egypt  destroyed,  subjugated,  invincible,  I  would 
take  as  typical  of  what  I  mean  by  the  natural  map 
of  mankind. 


192  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

Let  me  repeat  again  that  I  do  not  assert  there  is 
an  eternal  map.  It  does  change;  there  have  been 
times  —  the  European  settlement  of  America  and 
Siberia,  for  example,  the  Arabic  sweep  across  North 
Africa,  the  invasion  of  Britain  bj  the  Low  German 
peoples  —  when  it  has  changed  very  considerably 
in  a  century  or  so ;  but  at  its  swiftest  it  still  takes 
generations  to  change.  The  gentlemen  who  used 
to  sit  in  conferences  and  diets,  and  divide  up  the 
world  ever  and  again  before  the  nineteenth  century, 
never  realised  this.  It  is  only  within  the  last  hun- 
dred years  that  mankind  has  begun  to  grasp  the 
fact  that  one  of  the  first  laws  of  political  stability 
is  to  draw  your  political  boundaries  along  the  lines 
of  the  natural  map  of  mankind. 

Now  the  nineteenth  century  phrased  this  concep- 
tion by  talking  about  the  "  principle  of  national- 
ity." Such  interesting  survivals  of  the  nineteenth 
century  as  Mr.  C.  K.  Buxton  still  talk  of  settling 
human  affairs  by  that  "  principle."  But  unhappily 
for  him  the  world  is  not  so  simply  divided.  There 
are  tribal  regions  with  no  national  sense.  There 
are  extensive  regions  of  the  earth's  surface  where 
the  population  is  not  homogeneous,  where  people 
of  different  languages  or  different  incompatible 
creeds  live  village  against  village,  a  kind  of  human 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  193 

emulsion,  incapable  of  any  true  mixture  or  unity. 
Consider,  for  example,  Central  Africa,  Tyrone, 
Albania,  Bombay,  Constantinople  or  Transylvania. 
Here  are  regions  and  cities  with  either  no  national- 
ity or  with  as  much  nationality  as  a  patchwork 
quilt  has  colour.  .  .  . 

Now,  so  far  as  the  homogeneous  regions  of  the 
world  go,  I  am  quite  prepared  to  sustain  the  thesis 
that  they  can  only  be  tranquil,  they  can  only  de- 
velop their  possibilities  freely  and  be  harmless  to 
their  neighbours,  when  they  are  governed  by  local 
men,  by  men  of  the  local  race,  religion  and  tradi- 
tion, and  with  a  form  of  government  that,  unlike 
a  monarchy  or  a  plutocracy,  does  not  crystallise 
commercial  or  national  ambition.     So  far  I  go  with 
those  who  would  appeal  to  the  "  principle  of  nation- 
ality."    But    I    would    stipulate    further   that   it 
would  enormously  increase  the  stability  of  the  ar- 
rangement if  such  "  nations  "  could  be  grouped  to- 
gether into  "  United  States  "  wherever  there  were 
possibilities  of  inter-state  rivalries  and  commercial 
friction.     Where,  however,  one  deals  with  a  region 
of  mixed  nationality,  there  is  need  of  a  subtler  sys- 
tem of  adjustments.     Such  a  system  has  already 
been  worked  out  in  the  case  of  Switzerland,  where 
we  have  the  community  not  in  countries  but  can- 


194  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

tons,  each  with  its  own  religion,  its  culture  and 
self-government,  and  all  at  peace  under  a  polyglot 
and  impartial  common  government.  It  is  as  plain 
as  daylight  to  any  one  who  is  not  blinded  by  pa- 
triotic or  private  interest  that  such  a  country  as 
Albania,  which  is  mono-lingual  indeed,  but  hope- 
lessly divided  religiously,  will  never  be  tranquil, 
never  contented,  unless  it  is  under  a  cantonal  sys- 
tem, and  that  the  only  solution  of  the  Irish  diffi- 
culty along  the  belt  between  Ulster  and  Catholic 
Ireland  lies  in  the  same  arrangement.  And  then, 
thirdly,  there  are  the  regions  and  cities  of  no  na- 
tionality, such  as  Constantinople  or  Bombay,  which 
manifestly  appertain  not  to  one  nation,  but  many ; 
the  former  to  all  the  Black  Sea  nations,  the  latter 
to  all  India.  Disregarding  ambitions  and  tradi- 
tions, it  is  fairly  obvious  that  such  international 
places  would  be  best  under  the  joint  control  of,  and 
form  a  basis  of  union  between,  all  the  peoples  af- 
fected. 

Now  it  is  suggested  here  that  upon  these  three- 
fold lines  it  is  possible  to  work  out  a  map  of  the 
world  of  maximum  contentment  and  stability,  and 
that  there  will  be  a  gravitation  of  all  other  ar- 
rangements, all  empires  and  leagues  and  what  not, 
towards  this  rational  and  natural  map  of  mankind. 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  195 

This  does  not  imply  that  that  map  will  ultimately 
assert  itself,  but  that  it  will  always  be  tending  to 
assert  itself.  It  will  obsess  ostensible  politics.  I 
do  not  know  with  any  degree  of  certainty  what 
peculiar  forms  of  muddle  and  aggression  may  not 
record  themselves  upon  the  maps  of  2200 ;  I  do  not 
certainly  know  whether  mankind  will  be  better  off 
or  worse  off  then,  more  or  less  civilised;  but  I  do 
know,  with  a  very  considerable  degree  of  certainty, 
that  in  a.d.  2200  there  will  still  be  a  France,  an 
Ireland,  a  Germany,  a  Jugo-Slav  region,  a  Con- 
stantinople, a  Eajputana,  and  a  Bengal.  I  do  not 
mean  that  these  are  absolutely  fixed  things;  they 
may  have  receded  or  expanded.  But  these  are  the 
more  permanent  things;  these  are  the  field,  the 
groundwork,  the  basic  reality;  these  are  funda- 
mental forces  over  which  play  the  ambitions, 
treacheries,  delusions,  traditions,  tyrannies  of  in- 
ternational politics.  All  boundaries  will  tend  to 
reveal  these  fundamental  forms  as  all  clothing 
tends  to  reveal  the  body.  You  may  hide  the  waist ; 
you  will  only  reveal  the  shoulders  the  more.  You 
may  mask,  you  may  muffle  the  body ;  it  is  still  alive 
inside,  and  the  ultimate  determining  thing.  And, 
having  premised  this  much,  it  is  possible  to  take 
up  the  problem  of  the  peace  of  1917  or  1918,  or 


196  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

whenever  it  is  to  be,  with  some  sense  of  its  limita- 
tions and  superficiality. 

§  2 
We  have  already  hazarded  the  prophecy  that 
after  a  long  war  of  general  exhaustion  Germany 
will  be  the  first  to  realise  defeat.  This  does  not 
mean  that  she  will  surrender  unconditionally,  but 
that  she  will  be  reduced  to  bargaining  to  see  how 
much  she  must  surrender,  and  what  she  may  hold. 
It  is  my  impression  that  she  will  be  deserted  by 
Bulgaria,  and  that  Turkey  will  be  out  of  the  fight- 
ing before  the  end.  But  these  are  chancy  matters. 
Against  Germany  there  will  certainly  be  the  three 
great  Allies,  France,  Russia  and  Britain,  and  al- 
most certainly  Japan  will  be  with  them.  The  four 
will  probably  have  got  to  a  very  complete  and  de- 
tailed understanding  among  themselves.  Italy  — 
in,  I  fear,  a  slightly  detached  spirit  —  will  sit  at  the 
board.  Hungary  will  be  present,  sitting,  so  to 
speak,  amidst  the  decayed  remains  of  Austria. 
Roumania,  a  little  out  of  breath  through  hurrying 
at  the  last,  may  be  present  as  the  latest  ally  of 
Italy.  The  European  neutrals  will  be  at  least 
present  in  spirit ;  their  desires  will  be  acutely  felt ; 
but  it  is  doubtful  if  the  United  States  will  count 
for   all   that   they   might  in   the   decision.     Such 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  197 

weight  as  America  chooses  to  exercise  —  would  that 
she  would  choose  to  exercise  more  I  —  will  prob- 
ably be  on  the  side  of  the  rational  and  natural 
settlement  of  the  world. 

Now  the  most  important  thing  of  all  at  this 
settlement  will  be  the  temper  and  nature  of  the 
Germany  with  which  the  Allies  will  be  dealing. 

Let  us  not  be  blinded  by  the  passions  of  war 
into  confusing  a  people  with  its  government  and 
the  artificial  Kultur  of  a  brief  century.  There  is 
a  Germany,  great  and  civilised,  a  decent  and  ad- 
mirable people,  masked  by  Imperialism,  blinded  by 
the  vanity  of  the  easy  victories  of  half  a  century 
ago,  wrapped  in  illusion.  How  far  will  she  be 
chastened  and  disillusioned  by  the  end  of  this  war? 

The  terms  of  peace  depend  enormously  upon  the 
answer  to  that  question.  If  we  take  the  extremest 
possibility,  and  suppose  a  revolution  in  Germany 
or  in  South  Germany,  and  the  replacement  of  the 
Hohenzollerns  in  all  or  part  of  Germany  by  a 
Republic,  then  I  am  convinced  that  for  republican 
Germany  there  would  be  not  simply  forgiveness, 
but  a  warm  welcome  back  to  the  comity  of  nations. 
The  French,  British,  Belgians  and  Italians,  and 
every  civilised  force  in  Russia,  would  tumble  over 
one  another  in  their  eager  greeting  of  this  return 


198  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

to  sanitj.  If  we  suppose  a  less  extreme  but  more 
possible  revolution,  taking  the  form  of  an  inquiry 
into  the  sanity  of  the  Kaiser  and  his  eldest  son,  and 
the  establishment  of  constitutional  safeguards  for 
the  future,  that  also  would  bring  about  an  extraor- 
dinary modification  of  the  resolution  of  the  Pledged 
Allies.  But  no  ending  to  this  war,  no  sort  of 
settlement,  will  destroy  the  antipathy  of  the 
civilised  peoples  for  the  violent,  pretentious,  senti- 
mental and  cowardly  imperialism  that  has  so  far 
dominated  Germany.  All  Europe  outside  Ger- 
many now  hates  and  dreads  the  Hohenzollerns. 
No  treaty  of  peace  can  end  that  hate,  and  so  long 
as  Germany  sees  fit  to  identify  herself  with 
Hohenzollern  dreams  of  empire  and  a  warfare  of 
massacre  and  assassination,  there  must  be  war 
henceforth,  open,  or  but  thinly  masked,  against 
Germany.  It  will  be  but  the  elementary  common 
sense  of  the  situation  for  all  the  Allies  to  plan 
tariffs,  exclusions,  special  laws  against  German 
shipping  and  shareholders  and  immigrants  so  long 
as  every  German  remains  a  potential  servant  of 
that  system.  Whatever  Germany  may  think  of  the 
Hohenzollerns,  the  world  outside  Germany  regards 
them  as  the  embodiment  of  homicidal  nationalism. 
And  the  settlement  of  Europe  after  the  war,  if  it 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  199 

is  to  be  a  settlement  with  the  Hohenzollerns  and 
not  with  the  German  people,  must  include  the  vir- 
tual disarming  of  those  robber  murderers  against 
any  renewal  of  their  attack.  It  would  be  the  most 
obvious  folly  to  stop  anywhere  short  of  that.  With 
Germany  we  would  welcome  peace  to-morrow;  we 
would  welcome  her  shipping  on  the  seas  and  her 
flag  about  the  world;  against  the  Hohenzollerns 
it  must  obviously  be  war  to  the  bitter  end. 

But  the  ultimate  of  all  sane  European  policy, 
as  distinguished  from  oligarchic  and  dynastic  fool- 
ery, is  the  establishment  of  the  natural  map  of 
Europe.  There  exists  no  school  of  thought  that 
can  claim  a  moment's  consideration  among  the 
Allies,  which  aims  at  the  disintegration  of  the 
essential  Germany  or  the  subjugation  of  any  Ger- 
mans to  an  alien  rule.  Nor  does  any  one  grudge 
Germany  wealth,  trade,  shipping,  or  anything  else 
that  goes  with  the  politician's  phrase  of  "legiti- 
mate expansion  "  for  its  own  sake.  If  we  do  now 
set  our  minds  to  deprive  Germany  of  these  things 
in  their  fulness,  it  is  in  exactly  the  same  spirit  as 
that  in  which  one  might  remove  that  legitimate  and 
peaceful  implement,  a  bread  knife,  from  the  hand  of 
a  homicidal  maniac.  Let  but  Germany  cure  her- 
self of  her  Hohenzollern  taint,  and  the  world  will 


200  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

grudge  her  wealth  and  economic  pre-eminence  as 
little  as  it  grudges  wealth  and  economic  pre-emi- 
nence to  the  United  States. 

Now  the  probabilities  of  a  German  revolution 
open  questions  too  complex  and  subtle  for  our  pres- 
ent speculation.  I  would  merely  remark  in  pass- 
ing that  in  Great  Britain  at  least  those  possibili- 
ties seem  to  me  to  be  enormously  underrated.  For 
our  present  purpose  it  will  be  most  convenient  to 
indicate  a  sort  of  maximum  and  minimum,  depend- 
ing upon  the  decision  of  Germany  to  be  entirely 
Hohenzollern  or  wholly  or  in  part  European.  But 
in  either  case  we  are  going  to  assume  that  it  is 
Germany  which  has  been  most  exhausted  by  the 
war,  and  which  is  seeking  peace  from  the  Allies, 
who  have  also,  we  will  assume,  excellent  internal 
reasons  for  desiring  it.  With  the  Hohenzollerns 
it  is  nonsense  to  dream  of  any  enduring  peace,  but 
whether  we  are  making  a  lasting  and  friendly  peace 
with  Germany  or  merely  a  sort  of  truce  of  military 
operations  that  will  be  no  truce  in  the  economic 
war  against  Hohenzollern  resources,  the  same  es- 
sential idea  will,  I  think,  guide  all  the  peace-desir- 
ing Powers.  They  will  try  to  draw  the  boundaries 
as  near  as  they  can  to  those  of  the  natural  map  of 
mankind. 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  201 

Then,  writing  as  an  Englishman,  my  first  thought 
of  the  European  map  is  naturally  of  Belgium. 
Only  absolute  smashing  defeat  could  force  either 
Britain  or  France  to  consent  to  anything  short  of 
the  complete  restoration  of  Belgium.  Eather  than 
give  that  consent  they  will  both  carry  the  war  to 
at  present  undreamt-of  extremities.  Belgium  must 
be  restored;  her  neutrality  must  be  replaced  by  a 
defensive  alliance  with  her  two  Western  Allies, 
and  if  the  w^orld  has  still  to  reckon  with  Hohenzol- 
lerns,  then  her  frontier  must  be  thrust  forward 
into  the  adjacent  French-speaking  country  so  as  to 
minimise  the  chances  of  any  second  surprise.  It 
is  manifest  that  every  frontier  that  gives  upon  the 
Hohenzollerns  must  henceforth  be  entrenched  line 
behind  line,  and  held  permanently  by  a  garrison 
ready  for  any  treachery,  and  it  becomes  of  primary 
importance  that  the  Franco-Belgian  line  should  be 
as  short  and  strong  as  possible.  Aix,  which  Ger- 
many has  made  a  mere  jumping-off  place  for  ag- 
gressions, should  clearly  be  held  by  Belgium 
against  a  Hohenzollern  Empire,  and  the  fortified 
and  fiscal  frontier  would  run  from  it  southward  to 
include  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Luxembourg,  with  its 
French  sympathies  and  traditions,  in  the  perma- 
nent alliance.     It  is  quite  impossible  to  leave  this 


202  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

ambiguous  territory  as  it  was  before  the  war,  with 
its  railway  in  German  hands  and  its  postal  and 
telegraphic  service  (since  1913)  under  Hohenzol- 
lern  control.  It  is  quite  impossible  to  hand  over 
this  strongly  anti-Prussian  population  to  Hohen- 
zollern  masters. 

But  an  Englishman  must  needs  write  with  diffi- 
dence upon  this  question  of  the  Western  bound- 
ary. It  is  clear  that  all  the  boundaries  of  1914 
from  Aix  to  Basel  are  a  part  of  ancient  history. 
No  "  as  you  were  "  is  possible  there.  And  it  is  not 
the  business  of  any  one  in  Great  Britain  to  redraw 
them.  That  task  on  our  side  lies  between  France 
and  Belgium.  The  business  of  Great  Britain  in 
the  matter  is  as  plain  as  daylight.  It  is  to  support 
to  her  last  man  and  her  last  ounce  of  gold  those 
new  boundaries  her  Allies  consider  essential  to 
their  comfort  and  security.  But  I  do  not  see  how 
France,  unless  she  is  really  convinced  she  is  beaten, 
can  content  herself  with  anything  less  than  a 
strong  Franco-Belgian  frontier  from  Aix,  that  will 
take  in  at  least  Metz  and  Saarburg.  She  knows 
best  the  psychology  of  the  lost  provinces,  and  what 
amount  of  annexation  will  spell  weakness  or 
strength.  If  she  demands  all  Alsace-Lorraine  back 
from  the  Hohenzollerns,  British  opinion  is  resolved 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  203 

to  support  her,  and  to  go  through  with  this  struggle 
until  she  gets  it.  To  guess  at  the  direction  of  the 
new  line  is  not  to  express  a  British  opinion,  but  to 
speculate  upon  the  opinion  of  France.  After  the 
experience  of  Luxembourg  and  Belgium  no  one  now 
dreams  of  a  neutralised  buffer  State.  What  does 
not  become  French  or  Belgian  of  the  Rhineland  will 
remain  German  —  forever.  That  is  perhaps  con- 
ceivable, for  example,  of  Strassburg  and  the  low- 
lying  parts  of  Alsace.     I  do  not  know. 

It  is  conceivable,  but  I  do  not  think  that  it  is 
probable.  I  think  the  probability  lies  in  the  other 
direction.  This  war  of  exhaustion  may  be  going 
on  for  a  year  or  so  more,  but  the  end  will  be  the 
thrusting  in  of  the  too  extended  German  lines. 
The  longer  and  bloodier  the  job  is,  the  grimmer 
will  be  the  determination  of  the  Pledged  Allies  to 
exact  a  recompense.  If  the  Germans  offer  peace 
while  they  still  hold  some  part  of  Belgium,  there 
will  be  dealings.  If  they  wait  until  the  French  are 
in  the  Palatinate,  then  I  doubt  if  the  French  will 
consent  to  go  again.  There  will  be  no  possible  ad- 
vantage to  Germany  in  a  war  of  resistance  once  the 
scale  of  her  fortunes  begins  to  sink.  .  .  . 

It  is  when  we  turn  to  the  east  of  Germany  that 
the  map-drawing  becomes  really  animated.     Here 


204  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

is  the  region  of  great  decisions.  The  natural  map 
shows  a  line  of  obstinately  non-German  communi- 
ties, stretching  nearly  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Adri- 
atic. There  are  Poland,  Bohemia  (with  her  kin- 
dred Slovaks),  the  Magyars,  and  the  Jugo-Serbs. 
In  a  second  line  come  the  Great  and  Little  Rus- 
sians, the  Roumanians,  and  the  Bulgarians.  And 
here  both  Great  Britain  and  France  must  defer  to 
the  wishes  of  their  two  Allies,  Russia  and  Italy. 
Neither  of  these  countries  has  expressed  inflexible 
intentions,  and  the  situation  has  none  of  the  in- 
evitable quality  of  the  Western  line.  Except  for 
the  Tsar's  promise  of  autonomy  to  Poland,  nothing 
has  been  promised.  On  the  Western  line  there  are 
only  two  possibilities  that  I  can  see :  the  Aix-Bale 
boundary,  or  the  sickness  and  death  of  France. 
On  the  Eastern  line  nothing  is  fated.  There  seems 
to  be  enormous  scope  for  bargaining  over  all  this 
field,  and  here  it  is  that  the  chances  of  compensa- 
tions and  consolations  for  Germany  are  to  be  found. 
Let  us  first  consider  the  case  for  Poland.  The 
way  to  a  reunited  Poland  seems  to  me  a  particu- 
larly difficult  one.  The  perplexity  arises  out  of 
the  crime  of  the  original  partition ;  whichever  side 
emerges  with  an  effect  of  victory  must  needs  give 
up  territory  if  an  autonomous  Poland  is  to  reap- 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  205 

pear.  A  victorious  Germany  would  probably  re- 
constitute the  Duchy  of  Warsaw  under  a  German 
prince;  an  entirely  victorious  Russia  would  prob- 
ably rejoin  Posen  to  Russian  Poland  and  the  Polish 
fragment  of  Galicia,  and  create  a  dependent  Polish 
kingdom  under  the  Tsar.  Neither  project  would  be 
received  with  unstinted  delight  by  the  Poles,  but 
either  would  probably  be  acceptable  to  a  certain 
section  of  them.  Disregarding  the  dim  feelings  of 
the  peasantry,  Austrian  Poland  would  probably  be 
the  most  willing  to  retain  a  connection  with  its  old 
rulers.  The  Habsburgs  have  least  estranged  the 
Poles.  It  is  the  only  section  of  Poland  which  has 
been  at  all  reconciled  to  foreign  control;  it  is  the 
most  autonomous  and  contented  of  the  fragments. 
It  is  doubtful  how  far  national  unanimity  is  any 
longer  possible  between  the  three  Polish  fragments. 
Like  most  English  writers,  I  receive  a  considerable 
amount  of  printed  matter  from  various  schools  of 
Polish  patriotism,  and  wide  divergences  of  spirit 
and  intention  appear.  A  weak,  divided  and  politi- 
cally isolated  Poland  of  twelve  or  fifteen  million 
people,  under  some  puppet  adventurer  king  set  up 
between  the  Hohenzollerns  and  the  Tsardom,  does 
not  promise  much  happiness  for  the  Poles  or  much 
security  for  the  peace  of  the  world.     An  entirely 


206  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

independent  Poland  will  be  a  feverish  field  of  in- 
ternational intrigue  —  intrigue  to  which  the  fatal 
Polish  temperament  lends  itself  all  too  readily;  it 
may  be  a  battlefield  again  within  five-and-twenty 
years.  I  think,  if  I  were  a  patriotic  Pole,  I  should 
determine  to  be  a  Slav  at  any  cost,  and  make  the 
best  of  Russia;  ally  myself  with  all  her  liberal 
tendencies,  and  rise  or  fall  with  her.  And  I  should 
do  my  utmost  in  a  field  where  at  present  too  little 
has  been  done  to  establish  understandings  and  lay 
the  foundations  of  a  future  alliance  with  the 
Czech-Slovak  community  to  the  south.  But,  then, 
I  am  not  a  Pole,  but  a  Western  European  with  a 
strong  liking  for  the  Russians.  I  am  democratic 
and  scientific,  and  the  Poles  I  have  met  are  Catholic 
and  aristocratic  and  romantic,  and  all  sorts  of 
difficult  things  that  must  make  co-operation  with 
them  on  the  part  of  Russians,  Ruthenian  peasants, 
Czechs,  and,  indeed,  other  Poles,  slow  and  inse- 
cure. I  doubt  if  either  Germany  or  Russia  wants 
to  incorporate  more  Poles  —  Russia  more  particu- 
larly, which  has  all  Siberia  over  which  to  breed 
Russians  —  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  there  is 
a  probability  that  the  end  of  this  war  may  find 
Poland  still  divided,  and  with  boundary  lines  run- 
ing  across  her  not  materially  different  from  those  of 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  207 

1914.  That  is,  I  think,  an  undesirable  probability, 
but  until  the  Polish  mind  qualifies  its  desire  for 
absolute  independence  with  a  determination  to 
orient  itself  definitely  to  some  larger  political  mass, 
it  remains  one  that  has  to  be  considered. 

But  the  future  of  Poland  is  not  really  separate 
from  that  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  monarchy,  nor 
is  that  again  to  be  dealt  with  apart  from  that  of 
the  Balkans.  From  Danzig  to  the  Morea  there 
runs  across  Europe  a  series  of  distinctive  peoples, 
each  too  intensely  different  and  national  to  be  ab- 
sorbed and  assimilated  by  either  of  their  greater 
neighbours,  Germany  or  Russia,  and  each  relatively 
too  small  to  stand  securely  alone.  None  have 
shaken  themselves  free  from  monarchical  tradi- 
tions; each  may  become  an  easy  prey  to  dynastic 
follies  and  the  aggressive  obsessions  of  diplomacy. 
Centuries  of  bloody  rearrangement  may  lie  before 
this  East  Central  belt  of  Europe.  To  the  liberal 
idealist  the  thought  of  a  possible  Swiss  system  or 
group  of  Swiss  systems  comes  readily  to  mind. 
One  thinks  of  a  grouping  of  groups  of  Republics, 
building  up  a  United  States  of  Eastern  Europe. 
But  neither  Hohenzollerns  nor  Tsar  would  wel- 
come that.  The  arm  of  democratic  France  is  not 
long  enough  to  reach  to  help  forward  such  a  de- 


208  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

velopment,  and  Great  Britain  is  never  sure  whether 
she  is  a  ^'  Crowned  Republic  "  or  a  Germanic  mon- 
archy. Hitherto  in  the  Balkans  she  has  lent  her 
influence  chiefly  to  setting  up  those  treacherous 
little  German  kings  who  have  rewarded  her  so  ill. 
The  national  monarchs  of  Serbia  and  Montenegro 
have  alone  kept  faith  with  civilisation.  I  doubt, 
however,  if  Great  Britain  will  go  on  with  that  dy- 
nastic policy.  She  herself  is  upon  the  eve  of  pro- 
found changes  of  spirit  and  internal  organisation. 
But  whenever  one  thinks  of  the  possibilities  of  Re- 
publican development  in  Europe  as  an  outcome  of 
this  war,  it  is  to  realise  the  disastrous  indifference 
of  America  to  the  essentials  of  the  European  situa- 
tion. The  United  States  of  America  could  exert  an 
enormous  influence  at  the  close  of  the  war  in  the 
direction  of  a  liberal  settlement  and  of  liberal  in- 
stitutions. .  .  .  They  will,  I  fear,  do  nothing  of  the 
sort. 

It  is  here  that  the  possibility  of  some  internal 
change  in  Germany  becomes  of  such  supreme  im- 
portance. The  Hohenzollern  Imperialism  towers 
like  the  black  threat  of  a  new  Csesarism  over  all  the 
world.  It  may  tower  for  some  centuries;  it  may 
vanish  to-morrow.  A  German  revolution  may  de- 
stroy it;  a  small  group  of  lunacy  commissioners 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  209 

may  fold  it  up  and  put  it  away.  But  should  it  go, 
it  would  at  least  take  with  it  nearly  every  crown 
between  Hamburg  and  Constantinople.  The  Ger- 
man kings  would  vanish  like  a  wisp  of  smoke. 
Suppose  a  German  revolution  and  a  correlated  step 
forward  towards  liberal  institutions  on  the  part 
of  Russia,  then  the  whole  stage  of  Eastern  Europe 
would  clear  as  fever  goes  out  of  a  man.  This  age 
of  international  elbowing  and  jostling,  of  intrigue 
and  diplomacy,  of  wars,  massacres,  deportations 
en  masse,  and  the  continual  fluctuation  of  irra- 
tional boundaries  would  come  to  an  end  forth- 
with. 

So  sweeping  a  change  is  the  extreme  possibility. 
The  probability  is  of  something  less  lucid  and  more 
prosaic ;  of  a  discussion  of  diplomatists ;  of  patched 
arrangements.  But  even  under  these  circum- 
stances, the  whole  Eastern  European  situation  is 
so  fluid  and  little  controlled  by  any  plain  necessity 
that  there  will  be  enormous  scope  for  any  individ- 
ual statesman  of  imagination  and  force  of  will. 
There  have  recently  been  revelations,  more  or  less 
trustworthy,  of  German  schemes  for  a  rearrange- 
ment of  Eastern  Europe.  They  implied  a  German 
victory.  Bohemia,  Poland,  Galicia  and  Ruthenia 
were  to  make  a  Habsburg-ruled  State  from  the  Bal- 


210  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

tic  to  the  Black  Sea.  The  Jugo-Slav  and  the  Mag- 
yar were  to  be  linked  (uneasy  bedfellows)  into  a 
second  kingdom,  also  Habsburg  ruled ;  Austria  was 
to  come  into  the  German  Empire  as  a  third  Habs- 
burg dukedom  or  kingdom;  Roumania,  Bulgaria 
and  Greece  were  to  continue  as  independent 
Powers,  German  ruled.  Recently  German  propos- 
als published  in  America  have  shown  a  disposition 
to  admit  the  claims  of  Roumania  to  the  Wallachian 
districts  of  Transylvania.  Evidently  the  urgent 
need  to  create  kingdoms  or  confederations  larger 
than  any  such  single  States  as  the  natural  map 
supplies  is  manifest  to  both  sides.  If  Germany, 
Italy  and  Russia  can  come  to  any  sort  of  general 
agreement  in  these  matters,  their  arrangements 
will  be  a  matter  of  secondary  importance  to  the 
Western  Allies  —  saving  our  duty  to  Serbia  and 
Montenegro,  and  their  rulers.  Russia  may  not  find 
the  German  idea  of  a  Polish  plus  Bohemian  border 
State  so  very  distasteful,  provided  that  the  ruler 
is  not  a  German;  Germany  may  find  the  idea  still 
tolerable  if  the  ruler  is  not  the  Tsar.  The  destiny 
of  the  Serbo-Croatian  future  lies  largely  in  the 
hands  of  Italy  and  Bulgaria.  Bulgaria  was  not 
in  this  war  at  the  beginning,  and  she  may  not  be 
in  it  at  the  end.     Her  King  is  neither  immortal  nor 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  211 

irreplaceable.  Her  desire  now  must  be  largely  to 
retain  her  winnings  in  Macedonia,  and  keep  the 
frontier  posts  of  a  too  embracing  Germany  as  far 
off  as  possible.  She  has  nothing  to  gain  and  much 
to  fear  from  Roumania  and  Greece.  Her  present 
relations  with  Turkey  are  unnatural.  She  has 
everything  to  gain  from  a  prompt  recovery  of  the 
friendship  of  Italy  and  the  sea  Powers.  A  friendly 
Serbo-Croatian  buffer  State  against  Germany  wall 
probably  be  of  equal  comfort  in  the  future  to  Italy 
and  Bulgaria;  more  especially  if  Italy  has  pushed 
down  the  Adriatic  coast  along  the  line  of  the  former 
Venetian  possessions.  Serbia  has  been  overrun, 
but  never  were  the  convergent  forces  of  adjacent 
interests  so  clearly  in  favour  of  her  recuperation. 
The  possibility  of  Italy  and  that  strange  Latin 
outlier,  Roumania,  joining  hands  through  an  allied 
and  friendly  Serbia  must  be  very  present  in  Italian 
thought.  The  allied  conception  of  the  land  route 
from  the  West  and  America  to  Bagdad  and  India 
is  by  Mont  Cenis,  Trieste,  Serbia  and  Constanti- 
nople, as  their  North  European  line  to  India  is 
through  Russia  by  Baku. 

And  that  brings  us  to  Constantinople.  Constan- 
tinople is  not  a  national  city ;  it  is  now,  and  it  has 
always   been,   an   artificial   cosmopolis,   and   Con- 


212  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

stantinople  and  the  Dardanelles  are  essentially  the 
gate  of  the  Black  Sea.  It  is  to  Russia  that  the 
waterway  is  of  supreme  importance.  Any  other 
Power  upon  it  can  strangle  Russia ;  Russia,  posses- 
sing it,  is  capable  of  very  little  harm  to  any  other 
country.  Roumania  is  the  next  most  interested 
country.  But  Roumania  can  reach  up  the  Danube 
and  through  Bulgaria,  Serbia  or  Hungary  to  the 
outer  world.  Her  greatest  trade  will  always  be 
with  Central  Europe.  For  generations  the  Turks 
held  Thrace  and  Anatolia  before  they  secured  Con- 
stantinople. The  Turk  can  exist  without  Constan- 
tinople; he  is  at  his  best  outside  Constantinople; 
the  fall  of  Constantinople  was  the  beginning  of  his 
decay.  He  sat  down  there  and  corrupted.  His 
career  was  at  an  end.  I  confess  that  I  find  a  bias 
in  my  mind  for  a  Russian  ownership  of  Constan- 
tinople. I  think  that  if  she  does  not  get  it  now  her 
gravitation  towards  it  in  the  future  will  be  so  great 
as  to  cause  fresh  wars.  Somewhere  she  must  get 
to  open  sea,  and  if  it  is  not  through  Constantinople 
then  her  line  must  lie  either  through  a  dependent 
Armenia  thrust  down  to  the  coast  of  the  Levant 
or,  least  probable  and  least  desirable  of  all,  through 
the  Persian  Gulf.  The  Constantinople  route  is  the 
most    natural    and    least    controversial    of    these. 


THE  NEW  MAP  OF  EUROPE  213 

With  the  dwindling  of  the  Turkish  power,  the 
Turks  at  Constantinople  become  more  and  more 
like  robber  knights  levying  toll  at  the  pass.  I 
can  imagine  Russia  making  enormous  concessions 
in  Poland,  for  example,  accepting  retrocessions, 
and  conceding  autonomy,  rather  than  foregoing 
her  ancient  destiny  upon  the  Bosphorus.  I  be- 
lieve she  will  fight  on  along  the  Black  Sea  coast 
until  she  gets  there.  This,  I  think,  is  her  funda- 
mental end,  without  which  no  peace  is  worth  hav- 
ing, as  the  liberation  of  Belgium  and  the  satis- 
faction of  France  is  the  fundamental  end  of  Great 
Britain,  and  Trieste-Fiume  is  the  fundamental  end 
of  Italy.  But  for  all  the  land  between  Constanti- 
nople and  West  Prussia  there  are  no  absolutely 
fundamental  ends ;  that  is  the  land  of  quid  pro  quo; 
that  is  w^here  the  dealing  will  be  done.  Serbia 
must  be  restored  and  the  Croats  liberated;  sooner 
or  later  the  South  Slav  State  will  insist  upon  itself ; 
but,  except  for  that,  I  see  no  impossibility  in  the 
German  dream  of  three  kingdoms  to  take  the  place 
of  Austria-Hungary,  nor  even  in  a  southward  exten- 
sion of  the  Hohenzollern  Empire  to  embrace  the 
German  one  of  the  three.  If  the  Austrians  have  a 
passion  for  Prussian  "  Kultur,''  it  is  not  for  us  to 
restrain  it.     Austrian,  Saxon,  Bavarian,  Hanover- 


214  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

ian,  and  Prussian  must  adjust  their  own  differ- 
ences. 

Hungary  would  be  naturally  Habsburg;  is,  in 
fact,  now  essentially  Habsburg,  more  Habsburg 
than  Austria,  and  essentially  anti-Slav.  Her  grav- 
itation to  the  Central  Powers  seems  inevitable. 
Whether  the  Polish-Czech  combination  would  be  a 
Habsburg  kingdom  at  all  is  another  matter.  Only 
if,  after  all,  the  Allies  are  far  less  successful  than 
they  have  now  every  reason  to  hope  would  that  be- 
come possible.  The  gravitation  of  that  West  Slav 
state  to  the  Central  European  system  or  to  Russia 
will,  I  think,  be  the  only  real  measure  of  ultimate 
success  or  failure  in  this  war.  I  think  it  narrows 
down  to  that  so  far  as  Europe  is  concerned.  Most 
of  the  other  things  are  inevitable.  Such,  it  seems 
to  me,  is  the  most  open  possibility  in  the  European 
map  in  the  years  immediately  before  us.  If  by 
dying  I  could  end  the  Hohenzollern  Empire  to- 
morrow I  would  gladly  do  it.  But  I  have,  as  a  bal- 
ancing prophet,  to  face  the  high  probability  of  its 
outliving  me  for  some  generations.  It  is  to  me  a 
deplorable  probability.  Far  rather  would  I  antici- 
pate Germany  quit  of  her  eagles  and  Hohenzollerns, 
and  ready  to  take  her  place  as  the  leading  Power  of 
the  United  States  of  Europe. 


THE  UNITED  STATES,  FRANCE,  BRITAIN, 
AND  RUSSIA 

§  1 
In  this  chapter  I  propose  to  speculate  a  little  about 
the  future  development  of  these  four  great  States, 
whose  destinies  are  likely  to  be  much  more  closely 
interwoven  than  their  past  histories  have  been.  I 
believe  that  the  stars  in  their  courses  tend  to  draw 
these  States  together  into  a  dominant  peace  al- 
liance, maintaining  the  peace  of  the  world.  There 
may  be  other  stars  in  that  constellation,  Italy, 
Japan,  a  confederated  Latin  America,  for  example ; 
I  do  not  propose  to  deal  with  that  possibility  now, 
but  only  to  dwell  upon  the  development  of  under- 
standings and  common  aims  between  France, 
Russia,  and  the  English-speaking  States. 

They  have  all  shared  one  common  experience  dur- 
ing the  last  two  years ;  they  have  had  an  enormous 
loss  of  self-suflficiency.  This  has  been  particularly 
the  case  with  the  United  States  of  America.  At 
the  beginning  of  this  war,  the  United  States  were 

215 


216  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

still  possessed  by  the  glorious  illusion  that  they 
were  aloof  from  general  international  politics,  that 
they  needed  no  allies  and  need  fear  no  enemies,  that 
they  constituted  a  sort  of  asylum  from  war  and  all 
the  bitter  stresses  and  hostilities  of  the  old  world. 
Themselves  secure,  they  could  intervene  with  grim 
resolution  to  protect  their  citizens  all  over  the 
world.     Had  they  not  bombarded  Algiers?  .  .  . 

I  remember  that  soon  after  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  I  lunched  at  the  Savoy  Hotel  in  London  when 
it  was  crammed  with  Americans  suddenly  swept 
out  of  Europe  by  the  storm.  My  host  happened 
to  be  a  man  of  some  diplomatic  standing,  and  sev- 
eral of  them  came  and  talked  to  him.  They  were 
full  of  these  old-world  ideas  of  American  immunity. 
Their  indignation  was  comical  even  at  the  time. 
Some  of  them  had  been  hustled ;  some  had  lost  their 
luggage  in  Germany.  When,  they  asked,  was  it  to 
be  returned  to  them?  Some  seemed  to  be  under 
the  impression  that,  war  or  no  war,  an  American 
tourist  had  a  perfect  right  to  travel  about  in  the 
Vosges  or  up  and  down  the  Rhine  just  as  he  thought 
fit.  They  thought  he  had  just  to  wave  a  little 
American  flag,  and  the  referee  would  blow  a  whistle 
and  hold  up  the  battle  until  he  had  got  by  safely. 
One  family  had  actually  been  careering  about  in 


THE  UNITED  STATES  217 

a  cart  —  their  automobile  seized  —  between  the 
closing  lines  of  French  and  Germans,  brightly  una- 
ware of  the  disrespect  of  bursting  shells  for  Ameri- 
can nationality.  .  .  .  Since  those  days  the  Ameri- 
can nation  has  lived  politically  a  hundred  years. 

The  people  of  the  United  States  have  shed  their 
delusion  that  there  is  an  Eastern  and  a  Western 
hemisphere,  and  that  nothing  can  ever  pass  between 
them  but  immigrants  and  tourists  and  trade,  and 
realised  that  this  world  is  one  round  globe  that  gets 
smaller  and  smaller  every  decade  if  you  measure 
it  by  day's  journeys.  They  are  only  going  over  the 
lesson  the  British  have  learnt  in  the  last  score  or 
so  of  years.  This  is  one  world  and  bayonets  are  a 
crop  that  spreads.  Let  them  gather  and  seed,  it 
matters  not  how  far  from  you,  and  a  time  will  come 
when  they  will  be  sticking  up  under  your  nose. 
There  is  no  real  peace  but  the  peace  of  the  whole 
world,  and  that  is  only  to  be  kept  by  the  whole 
world  resisting  and  suppressing  aggression  wher- 
ever it  arises.  To  any  one  who  watches  the  Ameri- 
can Press,  this  realisation  has  been  more  and  more 
manifest.  From  dreams  of  aloofness  and  ineffable 
superiority,  America  comes  round  very  rapidly  to 
a  conception  of  an  active  participation  in  the  diffi- 
cult business  of  statescraft.     She  is  thinking  of 


218  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

alliances,  of  throwing  her  weight  and  influence 
upon  the  side  of  law  and  security.  No  longer  a 
political  Thoreau  in  the  woods,  a  sort  of  vegetarian 
recluse  among  nations,  a  being  of  negative  virtues 
and  unpremeditated  superiorities,  she  girds  herself 
for  a  manly  part  in  the  toilsome  world  of  men. 

So  far  as  I  can  judge  the  American  mind  is  emi- 
nently free  from  any  sentimental  leaning  towards 
the  British.  Americans  have  a  traditional  hatred 
of  the  Hanoverian  monarchy,  and  a  democratic  dis- 
belief in  autocracy.  They  are  far  more  acutely 
aware  of  differences  than  resemblances.  They 
suspect  every  Englishman  of  being  a  bit  of  a  gen- 
tleman and  a  bit  of  a  flunkey.  I  have  never  found 
in  America  anything  like  that  feeling  common  in 
the  mass  of  English  people  that  prevents  the  use  of 
the  word  "  foreigner  "  for  an  American ;  there  is 
nothing  to  reciprocate  the  sympathy  and  pride  that 
English  and  Irish  republicans  and  radicals  feel  for 
the  States.  Few  Americans  realise  that  there  are 
such  beings  as  English  republicans.  What  has 
linked  them  with  the  British  hitherto  has  been 
very  largely  the  common  language  and  literature; 
it  is  only  since  the  war  began  that  there  seems  to 
have  been  any  appreciable  development  of  frater- 
nal feeling.     And  that  has  been  not  so  much  dis- 


THE  UNITED  STATES  219 

eovery  of  a  mutual  affection  as  the  realisation  of  a 
far  closer  community  of  essential  thought  and  pur- 
pose than  has  hitherto  been  suspected.  The  Ameri- 
cans, after  thinking  the  matter  out  with  great 
frankness  and  vigour,  do  believe  that  Britain  is  on 
the  whole  fighting  against  aggression  and  not  for 
profit,  that  she  is  honestly  backing  France  and 
Belgium  against  an  intolerable  attack,  and  that  the 
Hohenzollern  Empire  is  a  thing  that  needs  dis- 
crediting and,  if  possible,  destroying  in  the  inter- 
ests of  all  humanity,  Germany  included.  And  they 
find  that,  allowing  for  their  greater  nearness,  the 
British  are  thinking  about  these  things  almost  ex- 
actly as  Americans  think  about  them.  They  follow 
the  phases  of  the  war  in  Great  Britain,  the  strain, 
the  blunderings,  the  tenacity,  the  onset  of  conscrip- 
tion in  an  essentially  non-military  community,  with 
the  complete  understanding  of  a  people  similarly 
circumstanced,  differing  only  by  scale  and  distance. 
They  have  been  through  something  of  the  sort  al- 
ready ;  they  may  have  something  of  the  sort  happen 
again.  It  had  not  occurred  to  them  hitherto  how 
parallel  we  were.  They  begin  to  have  inklings  of 
how  much  more  parallel  we  may  presently  become. 
There  is  evidence  of  a  real  search  for  American 
affinities  among  the  other  peoples  of  the  world;  it 


220  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

is  a  new  war-made  feature  of  the  thoughtful  litera- 
ture and  journalism  of  America.  And  it  is  inter- 
esting to  note  how  partial  and  divided  these  affini- 
ties must  necessarily  be.  Historically  and  politi- 
cally the  citizen  of  the  United  States  must  be  drawn 
most  closely  to  France.  France  is  the  one  other 
successful  modern  republic;  she  was  the  instigator 
and  friend  of  American  liberation.  With  Great 
Britain  the  tie  of  language,  the  tradition  of  personal 
freedom,  and  the  strain  in  the  blood,  are  powerful 
links.  But  both  France  and  Britain  are  old  coun- 
tries, thickly  populated,  with  a  great  and  ancient 
finish  and  completeness,  full  of  implicit  relation- 
ships; America  is  by  comparison  crude,  unin- 
formed, explicit,  a  new  country,  still  turning  fresh 
soil,  still  turning  over  but  half-explored  natural  re- 
sources. The  United  States  constitute  a  modern 
country,  a  country  on  an  unprecedented  scale,  be- 
ing organised  from  the  very  beginning  on  modern 
lines.  There  is  only  one  other  such  country  upon 
the  planet,  and  that  curiously  enough  is  parallel 
in  climate,  size,  and  position :  Russia  in  Asia. 
Even  Russia  in  Europe  belongs  rather  to  the  new- 
ness that  is  American  than  to  the  tradition  that  is 
European ;  Harvard  was  founded  more  than  half  a 
century  before  Petrograd.     And  when  I  looked  out 


THE  UNITED  STATES  221 

of  the  train  window  on  my  way  to  Petrograd  from 
Germany,  the  little  towns  I  saw  were  like  no  Eu- 
ropean towns  I  had  ever  seen.  The  wooden  houses, 
the  broad  unmade  roads,  the  traffic,  the  winter-bit- 
ten scenery,  ^  sort  of  untidy  spaciousness,  took  my 
mind  instantly  to  the  country  one  sees  in  the  back 
part  of  New  York  State  as  one  goes  from  Boston  to 
Niagara.  And  the  reality  follows  the  appearance. 
The  United  States  and  Russia  are  the  west  and  the 
east  of  the  same  thing;  they  are  great  modern 
States,  developing  from  the  beginning  upon  a  scale 
that  only  railways  make  possible.  France  and 
Britain  may  perish  in  the  next  two  centuries  or  they 
may  persist,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  two 
centuries  ahead  Russia  and  the  United  States  will 
be  two  of  the  greatest  masses  of  fairly  homogeneous 
population  on  the  globe. 

There  are  no  countries  with  whom  the  people  of 
the  United  States  are  so  likely  to  develop  sympa- 
thy and  a  sense  of  common  values  and  common  in- 
terests as  with  these  three,  unless  it  be  with  the 
Scandinavian  peoples.  The  Scandinavian  peoples 
have  developed  a  tendency  to  an  extra-European 
outlook,  to  look  west  and  east  rather  than  south- 
wardly, to  be  pacifist  and  progressive  in  a  manner 
essentially  American.     From  any  close  sympathy 


222  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

with  Germany  the  Americans  are  cut  off  at  present 
by  the  Hohenzollerns  and  the  system  of  ideas  that 
the  Hohenzollerns  have  imposed  upon  German 
thought.  So  long  as  the  Germans  cling  to  the 
tawdry  tradition  of  the  Empire,  so  long  as  they 
profess  militarism,  so  long  as  they  keep  up  their 
ridiculous  belief  in  some  strange  racial  superiority 
to  the  rest  of  mankind,  it  is  absurd  to  expect  any  co- 
operative feeling  between  them  and  any  other  great 
people.  The  American  tradition  is  based  upon  the 
casting  off  of  a  Germanic  monarchy;  it  is  its 
cardinal  idea.  These  sturdy  Republicans  did  not 
fling  out  the  Hanoverians  and  their  Hessian  troops 
to  prepare  the  path  of  glory  for  Potsdam.  But  ex- 
cept for  the  gash  caused  by  the  Teutonic  monarchy, 
there  runs  round  the  whole  world  a  north  temperate 
and  sub-arctic  zone  of  peoples,  generally  similar  in 
complexion,  physical  circumstances,  and  intellect- 
ual and  moral  quality,  having  enormous  unde- 
veloped natural  resources,  and  a  common  interest 
in  keeping  the  peace  while  these  natural  resources 
are  developed,  having  also  a  common  interest  in 
maintaining  the  integrity  of  China  and  preventing 
her  development  into  a  military  power ;  it  is  a  zone 
wdth  the  clearest  prospect  of  a  vast  increase  in  its 
already  enormous  population,  and  it  speaks  in  the 


THE  UNITED  STATES  223 

main  one  or  other  of  three  languages,  either  French, 
Russian,  or  English.  I  believe  that  natural  sym- 
pathy will  march  with  the  obvious  possibilities  of 
the  situation  in  bringing  the  American  mind  to  the 
realisation  of  this  band  of  common  interests,  and 
of  its  compatibility  with  the  older  idea  of  an  Ameri- 
can continent  protected  by  a  Monroe  doctrine  from 
any  possibility  of  aggression  from  the  monarchies 
of  the  old  world.  As  the  old  conception  of  isola- 
tion fades,  and  the  American  mind  accustoms  itself 
to  the  new  conception  of  a  need  of  alliances  and  un- 
derstandings to  save  mankind  from  the  megalo- 
mania of  races  and  dynasties,  I  believe  it  will  turn 
first  to  the  idea  of  keeping  the  seas  with  Britain 
and  France,  and  then  to  this  still  wider  idea  of  an 
understanding  with  the  Pledged  Allies  that  will 
keep  the  peace  of  the  world. 

Now  Germany  has  taught  the  world  several 
things,  and  one  of  the  most  important  of  these  les- 
sons is  the  fact  that  the  destinies  of  States  and 
peoples  is  no  longer  to  be  determined  by  the  secret 
arrangements  of  diplomatists  and  the  agreements 
or  jealousies  of  kings.  For  fifty  years  Germany 
has  been  unifying  the  mind  of  her  people  against 
the  world.  She  has  obsessed  them  with  an  evil 
ideal,  but  the  point  we  have  to  note  is  that  she  has 


224  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

succeeded  in  obsessing  them  with  that  ideal.  No 
other  modern  country  has  even  attempted  such  a 
moral  and  mental  solidarity  as  Germany  has 
achieved.  And  good  ideals  need,  just  as  much  as 
bad  ones,  systematic  inculcation,  continual  open 
exi^ression  and  restatement.  Mute,  mindless,  or 
demented  nations  are  dangerous  and  doomed  na- 
tions. The  great  political  conceptions  that  are 
needed  to  establish  the  peace  of  the  world  must  be- 
come the  common  property  of  the  mass  of  intelligent 
adults  if  they  are  to  hold  against  the  political 
scoundrel,  the  royal  adventurer,  the  forensic  ex- 
ploiter, the  enemies  and  scatterers  of  mankind. 
The  French,  Americans,  and  English  have  to  realise 
this  necessity;  they  have  to  state  a  common  will 
and  they  have  to  make  their  possession  by  that  will 
understood  by  the  Russian  people,  and  they  have 
to  share  that  will  with  the  Russian  people.  Be- 
yond that  there  lies  the  still  greater  task  of  making 
some  common  system  of  understandings  with  the 
intellectual  masses  of  China  and  India.  At  pres- 
ent, with  three  of  these  four  great  Powers  enor- 
mously preoccupied  with  actual  warfare,  there  is  an 
opportunity  for  guiding  expression  on  the  part  of 
America  such  as  may  never  occur  again.  .  .  . 
So  far  I  have  been  stating  a  situation  and  re- 


THE  UNITED  STATES  225 

viewing  certain  possibilities.  In  the  past  half  cen- 
tury the  United  States  has  been  developing  a  great 
system  of  universities  and  a  continental  production 
of  literature  and  discussion  to  supplement  the 
limited  press  and  the  New  England  literature  of 
the  earlier  phase  of  the  American  process.  It  is 
one  of  the  most  interesting  speculations  in  the 
world  to  every  one  how  far  this  new  organisation 
of  the  American  mind  is  capable  of  grasping  the 
stupendous  opportunities  and  appeals  of  the  pres- 
ent time.  The  war  and  the  great  occasions  that 
must  follow  the  war,  will  tax  the  mind  and  the  in- 
tellectual and  moral  forces  of  the  Pledged  Allies 
enormously.  How  far  is  this  new  but  very  great 
and  growing  system  of  thought  and  learning  in  the 
United  States  capable  of  that  propaganda  of  ideas 
and  language,  that  progressive  expression  of  a  de- 
veloping ideal  of  community,  that  in  countries  so 
spontaneous,  so  chaotic  or  democratic  as  the  United 
States  and  the  Pledged  Allies  must  necessarily  take 
the  place  of  the  organised  authoritative  Kultur  of 
the  Teutonic  type  of  State.  As  an  undisguisedly 
patriotic  Englishman  I  would  like  to  see  the  lead 
in  this  intellectual  synthesis  of  the  nations,  that 
must  be  achieved  if  wars  are  to  cease,  undertaken 
by  Great  Britain.     But  I  am  bound  to  confess  that 


226  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

iu  Great  Britain  I  see  neither  the  imaginative 
courage  of  France  nor  the  brisk  enterprise  of  the 
Americans.  I  see  this  matter  as  a  question  of 
peace  and  civilisation,  but  there  are  other  baser  but 
quite  as  effective  reasons  why  America,  France  and 
Great  Britain  should  exert  themselves  to  create 
confidences  and  understandings  between  their  i^op- 
ulations  and  the  Russian  population.  There  is 
the  immediate  business  opportunity  in  Russia. 
There  is  the  secondary  business  opportunity  in 
China  that  can  best  be  developed  as  the  partners 
rather  than  as  the  rivals  of  the  Russians.  Since 
the  Americans  are  nearest,  by  way  of  the  Pacific, 
since  they  are  likely  to  have  more  capital  and  more 
free  energy  to  play  with  than  the  Pledged  Allies, 
I  do  on  the  whole  incline  to  the  belief  that  it  is  they 
who  will  yet  do  the  pioneer  work  and  the  leading 
work  that  this  opportunity  demands. 

§  2 
If  beneath  the  alliances  of  the  present  war  there 
is  to  grow  up  a  system  of  enduring  understandings 
that  will  lead  to  the  peace  of  the  world,  there  is 
needed  as  a  basis  for  such  understandings  much 
greater  facility  of  intellectual  intercourse  than  ex- 
ists at  present.     Firstly  the  world  needs  a  lingua 


THE  UNITED  STATES  227 

franca,  next  the  Western  peoples  need  to  know  more 
of  the  Russian  language  and  life  than  they  do,  and 
thirdly  the  English  language  needs  tc  be  made  more 
easily  accessible  than  it  is  at  present.  The  chief 
obstacle  to  a  Frenchman  or  Englishman  learning 
Russian  is  the  difficult  and  confusing  alphabet ;  the 
chief  obstacle  to  any  one  learning  English  is  the 
irrational  spelling.  Are  people  likely  to  overcome 
these  very  serious  difficulties  in  the  future,  and  if 
so  how  will  they  do  it?  And  what  prospects  are 
there  of  a  lingua  franca? 

Wherever  one  looks  closely  into  the  causes  and 
determining  influences  of  the  great  convulsions  of 
this  time,  one  is  more  and  more  impressed  by  the 
apparent  smallness  of  the  ultimate  directing  in- 
fluence. It  seems  to  me  at  least  that  it  is  a  prac- 
tically proven  thing  that  this  vast  aggression  of 
Germany  is  to  be  traced  back  to  a  general  tone  of 
court  thinking  and  discussion  in  the  Prussia  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  to  the  theories  of  a  few  pro- 
fessors and  the  gathering  trend  of  German  educa- 
tion in  a  certain  direction.  It  seems  to  me  that 
similarly  the  language  teachers  of  to-day  and  to- 
morrow may  hold  in  their  hands  the  seeds  of  gigan- 
tic international  developments  in  the  future. 

It  is  not  a  question  of  the  skill  or  devotion  of 


228  WHAT  IS  COMmG? 

individual  teachers  so  much  as  of  the  possibility 
of  organising  them  upon  a  grand  scale.  An  in- 
dividual teacher  must  necessarily  use  the  ordinary 
books  and  ordinary  spelling  and  type  of  the  lan- 
guage in  which  he  is  giving  instruction ;  he  may  get 
a  few  elementary  instruction  books  from  a  private 
publisher,  specially  printed  for  teaching  purposes, 
but  very  speedily  he  finds  himself  obliged  to  go  to 
the  current  printed  matter.  This,  as  I  will  immedi- 
ately show,  bars  the  most  rapid  and  fruitful  method 
of  teaching.  And  in  this  as  in  most  affairs  private 
enterprise,  the  individualistic  system,  shows  itself 
a  failure.  In  England,  for  example,  the  choice  of 
Kussian  lesson,  books  is  poor  and  unsatisfactory, 
and  there  is  either  no  serviceable  Russian-English, 
English-Russian  school  dictionary  in  existence  or  it 
is  published  so  badly  as  to  be  beyond  the  range  of 
my  enquiries.  But  a  State,  or  a  group  of  universi- 
ties, or  even  a  rich  private  association  such  as  far- 
seeing  American,  French,  and  British  business  men 
might  be  reasonably  expected  to  form,  could  attack 
the  problem  of  teaching  a  language  in  an  altogether 
different  fashion. 

The  difficulty  in  teaching  English  lies  in  the  in- 
consistency of  the  spelling,  and  the  consequent  diffi- 
culties of  pronunciation.     If  there  were  available 


THE  UNITED  STATES  229 

an  ample  series  of  text -books,  reading  books,  and 
books  of  general  interest,  done  in  a  consistent 
phonetic  type  and  spelling  —  in  which  the  value 
of  the  letters  of  the  phonetic  system  followed  as 
far  as  possible  the  prevalent  usage  in  Europe  —  the 
difficulty  in  teaching  English  not  merely  to  for- 
eigners but,  as  the  experiments  in  teaching  reading 
of  the  Simplified  Spelling  Society  have  proved  up 
to  the  hilt,  to  English  children,  can  be  very  greatly 
reduced.  At  first  the  difficulty  of  the  irrational 
spelling  can  be  set  on  one  side.  The  learner  at- 
tacks and  masters  the  essential  language.  Then 
afterwards  he  can  if  he  likes  go  on  to  the  orthodox 
spelling,  which  is  then  no  harder  for  him  to  read 
and  master  than  it  is  for  an  Englishman  of  ordinary 
education  to  read  the  facetious  orthography  of 
Artemus  Ward  or  of  the  Westminster  Gazette 
"  orfis  boy.''  The  learner  does  one  thing  at  a  time 
instead  of  attempting,  as  he  would  otherwise  have 
to  do,  two  things  —  and  they  are  both  difficult  and 
different  and  conflicting  things  —  simultaneously. 
Learning  a  language  is  one  thing  and  memorising 
an  illogical  system  of  visual  images  —  for  that  is 
what  reading  ordinary  English  spelling  comes  to  — 
is  quite  another.  A  man  can  learn  to  play  first 
chess  and  then  bridge  in  half  the  time  that  these 


230  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

two  games  would  require  if  he  began  by  attempting 
simultaneous  play,  and  exactly  the  same  principle 
applies  to  the  language  problem. 

These  considerations  lead  on  to  the  idea  of  a 
special  development  or  sub-species  of  the  English 
language  for  elementary  teaching  and  foreign  con- 
sumption. It  would  be  English,  very  slightly  sim- 
plified and  regularised,  and  phonetically  spelt. 
Let  us  call  it  Anglo-American.  In  it  the  pro- 
pagandist power,  whatever  that  power  might  be, 
state,  university,  or  association,  would  print  not 
simply  instruction  books  but  a  literature  of  cheap 
editions.  Such  a  specialised  simplified  Anglo- 
American  variety  of  English  would  enormously 
stimulate  the  already  wide  diffusion  of  the  lan- 
guage, and  go  far  to  establish  it  as  that  lingua 
franca  of  which  the  world  has  need. 

And  in  the  same  way,  the  phonetic  alphabet 
adopted  as  the  English  medium  could  be  used  as  the 
medium  for  instruction  in  French,  where,  as  in  the 
British  Isles,  Canada,  north  and  central  Africa, 
and  large  regions  of  the  East,  it  is  desirable  to 
make  an  English-speaking  community  bilingual. 
At  present  a  book  in  French  means  nothing  to  an 
uninstructed  Englishman,  an  English  book  con- 
veys no  accurate  sound  images  to  an  uninstructed 


THE  UNITED  STATES  231 

Frenchman.  On  the  other  hand,  a  French  book 
printed  on  a  proper  phonetic  system  could  be  im- 
mediately read  aloud  —  though  of  course  it  could 
not  be  understood  —  by  an  uninstructed  English- 
man. From  the  first  he  would  have  no  difficulties 
with  the  sounds.  And  vice  versa.  Such  a  system 
of  books  would  mean  the  destruction  of  what  are 
for  great  masses  of  French  and  English  people  in- 
surmountable difficulties  on  the  way  to  bilingual- 
ism.  Its  production  is  a  task  all  too  colossal  for 
any  private  publishers  or  teachers,  but  it  is  a  task 
altogether  trivial  in  comparison  with  the  national 
value  of  its  consequences.  But  whether  it  will  ever 
be  carried  out,  is  just  one  of  those  riddles  of  the 
jumping  cat  in  the  human  brain  that  are  most  per- 
plexing to  the  prophet. 

The  problem  becomes  at  once  graver,  less  hopeful, 
and  more  urgent  when  we  take  up  the  case  of 
Russia.  I  have  looked  closely  into  this  business 
of  Russian  teaching,  and  I  am  convinced  that  only 
a  very,  very  small  number  of  French-  and  English- 
speaking  people  are  going  to  master  Russian  under 
the  existing  conditions  of  instruction.  If  we  West- 
erns want  to  get  at  Russia  in  good  earnest  we  must 
take  up  this  Russian  language  problem  with  an 
imaginative  courage  and  upon  a  scale  of  which  at 


232  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

present  I  see  no  signs.  If  we  do  not,  then  the  Bel- 
gians, French,  Americans,  and  English  will  be  do- 
ing business  in  Russia  after  the  war  in  the  German 
language  —  or  through  a  friendly  German  inter- 
preter. That,  I  am  afraid,  is  the  probability  of  the 
case.  But  it  need  not  be  the  case.  Will  and  in- 
telligence could  alter  all  that. 

What  has  to  be  done  is  to  have  Russian  taught  at 
first  in  a  western  phonetic  type.  Then  it  becomes 
a  language  not  very  much  more  difficult  to  acquire 
than,  say,  German  by  a  Frenchman.  When  the 
learner  can  talk  with  some  freedom,  has  a  fairly 
full  vocabulary,  a  phraseology,  knows  his  verb  and 
so  on,  then  and  then  only  should  he  take  up  the 
unfamiliar  and  confusing  set  of  visual  images  of 
Russian  lettering  —  I  speak  from  the  point  of  view 
of  those  who  read  the  Latin  alphabet.  How  con- 
fusing it  may  be  only  those  who  have  tried  it  can 
tell.  Its  familiarity  to  the  eye  increases  the  diffi- 
culty ;  totally  unfamiliar  forms  would  be  easier  to 
learn.  The  Frenchman  or  Englishman  is  con- 
fronted with 

COP; 

the  sound  of  that  is 

S  A  R   ! 


THE  UNITED  STATES  233 

For  those  wlio  learn  languages,  as  so  many  peo- 
ple do  nowadays,  by  visual  images,  there  will  al- 
ways be  an  undercurrent  towards  saying  "  COP." 
The  mind  plunges  hopelessly  through  that  tangle  to 
the  elements  of  a  speech  which  is  as  yet  unknown. 

Nevertheless  almost  all  the  instruction  in  Kus- 
sian  of  which  I  can  get  an  account  begins  with  the 
alphabet,  and  must,  I  suppose,  begin  with  the  al- 
phabet until  teachers  have  a  suitable  printed  set  of 
instruction  books  to  enable  them  to  take  the  better 
line.  One  school  teacher,  I  know,  in  a  public 
school,  devoted  the  entire  first  term,  the  third  of  a 
year,  to  the  alphabet.  At  the  end  he  was  still  dis- 
satisfied with  the  progress  of  his  pupils.  He  gave 
them  Russian  words,  of  course,  words  of  which  they 
knew  nothing  —  in  Russian  characters.  It  was 
too  much  for  them  to  take  hold  of  at  one  and  the 
same  time.  He  did  not  even  think  of  teaching  them 
to  write  French  and  English  w^ords  in  the  strange 
lettering.  He  did  not  attempt  to  write  his  Russian 
in  Latin  letters.  He  was  apparently  ignorant  of 
any  system  of  transliteration,  and  he  did  nothing  to 
mitigate  the  impossible  task  before  him.  At  the 
end  of  the  term  most  of  his  pupils  gave  up  the  hope- 
less effort.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  for  a 
great  number  of  "  visualising  "  people,  the  double 


234  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

effort  at  the  outset  of  Russian  is  entirely  too  much. 
It  stops  them  altogether.  But  to  almost  any  one 
it  is  possible  to  learn  Russian  if  at  first  it  is  pre- 
sented in  a  lettering  that  gives  no  trouble.  If  I 
found  myself  obliged  to  learn  Russian  urgently,  I 
would  get  some  accepted  system  of  transliteration, 
carefully  transcribe  every  word  of  Russian  in  my 
textbook  into  the  Latin  characters,  and  learn  the 
elements  of  the  language  from  my  manuscript.  A 
year  or  so  ago  I  made  a  brief  visit  to  Russia  with  a 
"  Russian  Self-Taught ''  in  my  pocket.  Nothing 
sticks,  nothing  ever  did  stick  of  that  self-taught 
Russian  except  the  words  that  I  learnt  in  Latin 
type.  Those  I  remember  as  I  remember  all  words, 
as  groups  of  Latin  letters.  I  learnt  to  count,  for 
example,  up  to  a  hundred.  The  other  day  I  failed 
to  recognise  the  Russian  word  for  eleven  in  Russian 
characters,  until  I  had  spelt  it  out.  Then  I  said 
"  Oh  I  of  course !  "  But  I  knew  it  when  I  heard  it. 
I  write  of  these  things  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  keen  learner.  Some  Russian  teachers  will  be 
found  to  agree  with  me;  others  will  not.  It  is  a 
paradox  in  the  psychology  of  the  teacher,  that  few 
teachers  are  willing  to  adopt  "  slick  "  methods  of 
teaching;  they  hate  cutting  corners  far  more  than 
they  hate  obstacles,  because  their  interest  is  in  the 


THE  UNITED  STATES  235 

teaching  and  not  in  the  "  getting  there."  But  what 
we  learners  want  is  not  an  exquisite,  rare  knowl- 
edge of  particulars,  we  do  not  want  to  spend  an 
hour  upon  Kussian  needlessly ;  we  want  to  get  there 
as  quickly  and  effectively  as  possible.  And  for 
that,  transliterated  books  are  essential. 

Now  these  may  seem  small  details  in  the  learn- 
ing of  languages,  mere  schoolmasters'  gossip,  but 
the  consequences  are  on  the  continental  scale. 
The  want  of  these  national  textbooks  and  readers  is 
a  great  gulf  between  Russia  and  her  Allies ;  it  is  a 
greater  gulf  than  the  profoundest  political  misun- 
derstanding could  he.  We  cannot  get  at  them  to 
talk  plainly  to  them,  and  they  cannot  get  at  us  to 
talk  plainly  to  us.  A  narrow  bridge  of  interpre- 
ters is  our  only  link  with  the  Russian  mind.  And 
many  of  those  interpreters  are  of  a  race  which  is 
for  very  good  reasons  hostile  to  Russia.  An  abund- 
ant, cheap  supply,  firstly  of  English  and  French 
books,  in  English  and  French  but  in  the  Russian 
character,  by  means  of  which  Russians  may  rap- 
idly learn  French  and  English  —  for  it  is  quite  a 
fable  that  these  languages  are  known  and  used  in 
Russia  below  the  level  of  the  court  and  aristoc- 
racy —  and  secondly  of  Russian  books  in  the  Latin 
(or  some  easy  phonetic  development  of  the  Latin) 


236  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

type,  will  do  more  to  facilitate  interchange  and  in- 
tercourse between  Russia  and  France,  America,  and 
Britain,  and  so  consolidate  the  present  alliance 
than  almost  any  other  single  thing.  But  that  sup- 
ply will  not  be  a  paying  thing  to  provide;  if  it  is 
left  to  publishers  or  private  language  teachers  or 
any  form  of  private  enterprise  it  will  never  be  pro- 
vided.    It  is  a  necessary  public  undertaking. 

But  because  a  thing  is  necessary  it  does  not  fol- 
low that  it  will  be  achieved.  Bread  may  be  neces- 
sary to  a  starving  man,  but  there  is  always  the 
alternative  that  he  will  starve.  France,  which  is 
most  accessible  to  creative  ideas,  is  least  interested 
in  this  particular  matter.  Great  Britain  is  still 
heavily  conservative.  It  is  idle  to  ignore  the  forces 
still  entrenched  in  the  established  church,  in  the 
universities  and  the  great  schools,  that  stand  for 
an  irrational  resistance  to  all  new  things.  Ameri- 
can universities  are  comparatively  youthful,  and 
sometimes  quite  surprisingly  innovating,  and 
America  is  the  country  of  the  adventurous  million- 
aire. There  has  been  evidence  in  several  American 
papers  that  have  reached  me  recently  of  a  disposi- 
tion to  get  ahead  with  Russia  and  cut  out  the  Ger- 
mans (and  incidentally  the  British).  Amidst  the 
cross-currents  and  overlappings  of  this  extraordi- 


THE  UNITED  STATES  237 

nary  time,  it  seems  to  me  highly  probable  that 
America  may  lead  in  this  vitally  important  effort 
to  promote  international  understanding. 


XI 

"  THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN  '' 

One  of  the  most  curious  aspects  of  the  British 
"  Pacifist ''  is  his  willingness  to  give  over  great 
blocks  of  the  black  and  coloured  races  to  the  Hohen- 
zollerns  to  exploit  and  experiment  upon.  I  myself 
being  something  of  a  pacifist,  and  doing  what  I  can, 
in  my  corner,  to  bring  about  the  Peace  of  the  World, 
the  Peace  of  the  World  triumphant  and  armed 
against  every  disturber,  could  the  more  readily 
sympathise  with  the  passive  school  of  Pacifists  if 
its  proposals  involved  the  idea  that  England  should 
keep  to  England  and  Germany  to  Germany.  My 
political  ideal  is  the  United  States  of  the  World,  a 
union  of  States  whose  state  boundaries  are  deter- 
mined by  what  I  have  defined  as  the  natural  map  of 
mankind.  I  cannot  understand  those  Pacifists  who 
talk  about  the  German  right  to  "  expansion,''  and 
babble  about  a  return  of  her  justly  lost  colonies. 
That  seems  to  me  not  pacificism  but  patriotic 
inversion.  This  large  disposition  to  hand  over 
our  fellow-creatures  to  a  Teutonic  educational  sys- 

238 


"  THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN  "      239 

tern  with  "  frightfulness ''  in  reserve,  to  "  effi- 
ciency ''  on  Wittenburg  lines,  leaves  me  —  hot.  The 
ghosts  of  the  thirst-tormented  Hereros  rise  up 
in  their  thousands  from  the  African  dust,  protest- 
ing. 

This  talk  of  "  legitimate  expansion  "  is  indeed 
now  only  an  exploiter's  cant.  The  age  of  "  expan- 
sion," the  age  of  European  "  empires  "  is  near  its 
end.  No  one  who  can  read  the  signs  of  the  times  in 
Japan,  in  India,  in  China,  can  doubt  it.  It  ended 
in  America  a  hundred  years  ago ;  it  is  ending  now 
in  Asia;  it  will  end  last  in  Africa,  and  even  in 
Africa  the  end  draws  near.  Spain  has  but  led  the 
way  which  other  "  empires  "  must  follow.  Look  at 
her  empire  in  the  atlases  of  1800.  She  fell  down 
the  steps,  it  is  true  —  but  they  are  difficult  to 
descend.  No  sane  man,  German  or  anti-German, 
who  has  weighed  the  prospects  of  the  new  age,  will 
be  desirous  of  a  restoration  of  the  now  vanished 
German  colonial  empire,  vindictive,  intriguing,  and 
unscrupulous,  a  mere  series  of  centres  of  attack 
upon  adjacent  territory,  to  complicate  the  immense 
disentanglements  and  readjustments  that  lie  al- 
ready before  the  French  and  British  and  Ital- 
ians. 

Directly  we  discuss  the  problem  of  the  absolutely 


240  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

necessary  permanent  alliance  that  this  war  has 
forced  upon  at  least  France,  Belgium,  Britain  and 
Russia,  this  problem  of  the  "  empires  "  faces  us. 
What  are  these  Allies  going  to  do  about  their  "  sub- 
ject races  "  ?  What  is  the  world  going  to  do  about 
the  "  subject  races ''?  It  is  a  matter  in  which  the 
"  subject  races  '^  are  likely  to  have  an  increasingly 
important  voice  of  their  own.  We  Europeans  may 
discuss  their  fate  to-day  among  ourselves ;  we  shall 
be  discussing  it  with  them  to-morrow.  If  we  do 
not  agree  with  them  then,  they  will  take  their  fates 
in  their  own  hands  in  spite  of  us.  Long  before  a.d. 
2100,  there  will  be  no  such  thing  as  a  "  subject 
race"  in  all  the  world. 

Here  again  we  find  ourselves  asking  just  that 
same  difficult  question  of  more  or  less,  that  arises 
at  every  cardinal  point  of  our  review  of  the  prob- 
able future.  How  far  is  this  thing  going  to  be  done 
finely ;  how  far  is  it  going  to  be  done  cunningly  and 
basely?  How  far  will  greatness  of  mind,  how  far 
will  imaginative  generosity,  prevail  over  the  jeal- 
ous and  pettifogging  spirit  that  lurks  in  every 
human  being?  Are  French  and  British  and  Bel- 
gians and  Italians,  for  example,  going  to  help  each 
other  in  Africa,  or  are  they  going  to  work  against 
and  cheat  each  other?     Is  the  Russian  seeking  only 


"  THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN  "      241 

a  necessary  outlet  to  the  seas  of  the  world,  or  has  he 
dreams  of  Delhi?  Here  again,  as  in  all  these  ques- 
tions, personal  idiosyncrasy  comes  in ;  I  am  strongly 
disposed  to  trust  the  good  in  the  Eussian.  But 
apart  from  this  uncertain  question  of  generosity, 
there  are  in  this  present  case  two  powerful  forces 
that  make  against  disputes,  secret  disloyalties,  and 
meanness.  One  is  that  Germany  will  certainly  be 
still  dangerous  at  the  end  of  the  war,  and  the  sec- 
ond is  that  the  gap  in  education,  in  efficiency,  in 
national  feeling  and  courage  of  outlook,  between 
the  European  and  the  great  Asiatic  and  African 
communities,  is  rapidly  diminishing.  If  the  Eu- 
ropeans squabble  much  more  for  world  ascendency, 
there  will  be  no  world  ascendency  for  them  to 
squabble  for.  We  have  still  no  means  of  measur- 
ing the  relative  enfeeblement  of  Europe  in  compari- 
son with  Asia  already  produced  by  this  war.  As  it 
is,  certain  things  are  so  inevitable  —  the  integra- 
tion of  a  modernised  Bengal,  of  China,  and  of  Egypt 
for  example  —  that  the  question  before  us  is  prac- 
tically reduced  to  whether  this  restoration  of  the 
subject  peoples  will  be  done  with  the  European's 
aid  and  goodwill,  or  whether  it  will  be  done  against 
him.  That  it  will  be  done  in  some  manner  or  other, 
is  certain. 


242  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

The  days  of  suppression  are  over.  They  know  it 
in  every  country  where  white  and  brown  and  yel- 
low mingle.  If  the  Pledged  Allies  are  not  disposed 
to  let  in  light  to  their  subject  peoples  and  prepare 
for  the  days  of  world  equality  that  are  coming,  the 
Germans  will.  If  the  Germans  fail  to  be  the  most 
enslaving  of  people,  they  may  become  the  most 
liberating.  They  will  set  themselves,  with  their 
characteristic  thoroughness,  to  destroy  that  magic 
"  prestige ''  which  in  Asia  particularly  is  the  clue  to 
the  miracle  of  European  ascendency.  In  the  long 
run  that  may  prove  no  ill  service  to  mankind.  The 
European  must  prepare  to  make  himself  acceptable 
in  Asia,  to  state  his  case  to  Asia  and  be  understood 
by  Asia,  or  to  leave  Asia.  That  is  the  blunt  reality 
of  the  Asiatic  situation. 

It  has  already  been  pointed  out  in  these  chapters 
that  if  the  alliance  of  the  Pledged  Allies  is  indeed 
to  be  permanent,  it  implies  something  in  the  nature 
of  a  Zollverein,  a  common  policy  towards  the  rest 
of  the  world  and  an  arrangement  involving  a  com- 
mon control  over  the  dependencies  of  all  the  Allies. 
It  will  be  interesting  now  that  we  have  sketched  a 
possible  map  of  Europe  after  the  war,  to  look  a 
little  more  closely  into  the  nature  of  the  "  empires  " 
concerned,  and  to  attempt  a  few  broad  details  of 


"  THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN  ''      243 

the  probable  map  of  the  eastern  hemisphere  outside 
Europe  in  the  years  immediately  to  come. 

Now  there  are,  roughly  speaking,  three  types  of 
overseas  "possessions.''  They  may  be  either  (1) 
territory  that  was  originally  practically  unoccupied 
and  that  was  settled  by  the  imperial  people,  or  (2) 
territory  with  a  barbaric  population  having  no 
national  idea,  or  (3)  conquered  States.  In  the 
case  of  the  British  Empire  all  three  are  present ;  in 
the  case  of  the  French  only  the  second  and  third; 
in  the  case  of  the  Russian  only  the  first  and  third. 
Each  of  these  types  must  necessarily  follow  its  own 
system  of  developments.  Take  first  those  terri- 
tories originally  but  thinly  occupied,  or  not  occu- 
pied at  all,  of  which  all  or  at  least  the  dominant 
element  of  the  population  is  akin  to  that  of  the 
'^  home  country."  These  used  to  be  called  by  the 
British  "  colonies  " —  though  the  "  colonies  "  of 
Greece  and  Rome  were  really  only  garrison  cities 
settled  in  foreign  lands  —  and  they  are  now  being 
rechristened  "  Dominions."  Australia  for  instance 
is  a  British  Dominion,  and  Siberia  and  most  of 
Russia  in  Asia,  a  Russian  Dominion.  Their  mani- 
fest destiny  is  for  their  children  to  become  equal 
citizens  with  the  cousins  and  brothers  they  have 
left  at  home. 


244  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

There  lias  been  much  discussion  in  England  dur- 
ing the  last  decade  upon  some  modification  of  the 
British  legislature  that  would  admit  representa- 
tives from  the  Dominions  to  a  proportional  share 
in  the  government  of  the  empire.  The  problem  has 
been  complicated  by  the  unsettled  status  of  Ireland 
and  the  mischief-making  Tories  there,  and  by  the 
perplexities  arising  out  of  those  British  depend- 
encies of  non-British  race,  the  Indian  States  for 
example,  whose  interests  are  sometimes  in  conflict 
with  those  of  the  Dominions.  The  attractiveness 
of  the  idea  of  an  Imperial  legislature  is  chiefly  on 
the  surface,  and  I  have  very  strong  doubts  of  its 
realisability.  These  Dominions  seem  rather  to 
tend  to  become  independent  and  distinct  sovereign 
States  in  close  and  affectionate  alliance  with  Great 
Britain,  and  having  a  common  interest  in  the  Brit- 
ish navy.  In  many  ways  the  interests  of  the  Domin- 
ions are  more  divergent  from  those  of  Great  Britain 
than  are  Great  Britain  and  Russia,  or  Great  Britain 
and  France.  Many  of  the  interests  of  Canada  are 
more  closely  bound  to  those  of  the  United  States 
than  they  are  to  those  of  Australasia,  in  such  a 
matter  as  the  maintenance  of  the  Monroe  Principle 
for  example.  South  Africa  again  takes  a  line  with 
regard  to  British  Indian  subjects  which  is  highly 


"  THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN  "      245 

embarrassing  to  Great  Britain.  There  is  a  tend- 
ency in  all  the  British  colonies  to  read  American 
books  and  periodicals  rather  than  British,  if  for 
no  other  reason  than  because  their  common  life, 
life  in  a  newish  and  very  democratic  land,  is  much 
more  American  than  British  in  character.  On  the 
other  hand  Great  Britain  has  European  interests  — 
the  integrity  of  Holland  and  Belgium  is  a  case  in 
point  —  which  are  much  closer  to  the  interests  of 
France  than  they  are  to  those  of  the  younger 
Britains  beyond  the  seas.  A  voice  in  an  alliance 
that  included  France  and  the  United  States  and 
had  its  chief  common  interest  in  the  control  of  the 
seas,  may  in  the  future  seem  far  more  desirable 
to  these  great  and  growing  English-speaking 
Dominions  than  the  sending  of  representatives  to 
an  imperial  House  of  Lords  at  Westminster,  and 
the  adornment  of  elderly  colonial  politicians  with 
titles  and  decorations  at  Buckingham  Palace. 

I  think  Great  Britain  and  her  Allies  have  all  of 
them  to  prepare  their  minds  for  a  certain  release  of 
their  grip  upon  their  "  possessions,''  if  they  wish  to 
build  up  a  larger  unity ;  I  do  not  see  that  any  secure 
unanimity  of  purpose  is  possible  without  such  re- 
leases and  readjustments. 

Now  the  next  class  of  foreign  "  possession ''  is 


246  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

that  in  which  the  French  and  Belgians  and  Italians 
are  most  interested.  Britain  also  has  possessions 
of  this  type  in  Central  Africa  and  the  less  civilised 
districts  of  India,  but  Russia  has  scarcely  anything 
of  the  sort.  In  this  second  class  of  possession,  the 
population  is  numerous,  barbaric,  and  incapable  of 
any  large  or  enduring  political  structure,  and  over 
it  rules  a  small  minority  of  European  adminis- 
trators. The  greatest  of  this  series  of  possessions 
are  those  in  black  Africa.  The  French  imagina- 
tion has  taken  a  very  strong  hold  of  the  idea  of  a 
great  French-speaking  West  and  Central  Africa, 
with  which  the  ordinary  British  citizen  will  only 
too  gladly  see  the  conquered  German  colonies  in- 
corporated. The  Italians  have  a  parallel  field  of 
development  in  the  hinterland  of  Tripoli.  Side  by 
side,  France,  Belgium  and  Italy,  no  longer  troubled 
by  hostile  intrigues,  may  very  well  set  themselves 
in  the  future  to  the  task  of  building  up  a  congenial 
Latin  civilisation  out  of  the  tribal  confusions  of 
these  vast  regions.  They  will,  I  am  convinced,  do 
far  better  than  the  English  in  this  domain.  The 
English-speaking  peoples  have  been  perhaps  the 
most  successful  settlers  in  the  world;  the  United 
States  and  the  Dominions  are  there  to  prove  it; 


"THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN''      247 

only  the  Russians  in  Siberia  can  compare  with 
them ;  but  as  administrators  the  British  are  a  race 
coldly  aloof.  They  have  nothing  to  give  a  black 
people,  and  no  disposition  to  give.  The  Latin- 
speaking  peoples,  the  Mediterranean  nations,  on  the 
other  hand,  have  proved  the  most  successful  assimi- 
lators  of  other  races  that  mankind  has  ever  known. 
Alexandre  Dumas  is  not  the  least  of  the  glories  of 
France.  In  a  hundred  years'  time  black  Africa, 
west  of  Tripoli,  from  Oran  to  Rhodesia,  will,  I  be- 
lieve, talk  French.  And  what  does  not  speak 
French  will  speak  the  closely  related  Italian.  I  do 
not  see  why  this  Latin  black  culture  should  not  ex- 
tend across  equatorial  Africa  to  meet  the  Indian 
influence  at  the  coast,  and  reach  out  to  join  hands 
with  Madagascar.  I  do  not  see  why  the  British 
flag  should  be  any  impediment  to  the  Latinisation 
of  tropical  Africa,  or  to  the  natural  extension  of 
the  French  and  Italian  languages  through  Egypt. 
I  guess,  however,  that  it  will  be  an  Islamic  and  not 
a  Christian  cult  that  will  be  talking  Italian  and 
French.  For  the  French-speaking  civilisation  will 
make  roads  not  only  for  French,  Belgians,  and 
Italians,  but  for  the  Arabs  whose  religion  and  cul- 
ture already  lie  like  a  net  over  black  Africa.     No 


248  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

other  peoples  and  no  other  religion  can  so  conveni- 
ently give  the  negro  what  is  needed  to  bring  him 
into  the  comity  of  civilised  peoples.  .  .  . 

A  few  words  of  digression  upon  the  future  of 
Islam  may  not  be  out  of  place  here.  The  idea  of  a 
militant  Christendom  has  vanished  from  the  world. 
The  last  pretensions  of  Christian  propaganda  have 
been  buried  in  the  Balkan  trenches.  A  unification 
of  Africa  under  Latin  auspices  carries  with  it  now 
no  threat  of  missionary  invasion.  Africa  will  be 
a  fair  field  for  all  religions,  and  the  religion  to 
which  the  negro  will  take  will  be  the  religion  that 
best  suits  his  needs.  That  religion,  we  are  told  by 
nearly  every  one  who  has  a  right  to  speak  upon  such 
questions,  is  Islam,  and  its  natural  propagandist  is 
the  Arab.  There  is  no  reason  why  he  should  not  be 
a  Frenchified  Arab. 

Both  the  French  and  the  British  have  the  strong- 
est interest  in  the  revival  of  Arabic  culture.  Let 
the  German  learn  Turkish  if  it  pleases  him. 
Through  all  Africa  and  Western  Asia  there  is  a 
great  to-morrow  for  a  renascent  Islam  under  Arab 
auspices.  Constantinople,  that  venal  city  of  the 
waterways,  sitting  like  Asenath  at  the  ford,  has  cor- 
rupted all  who  came  to  her ;  she  has  been  the  paraly- 
sis of  Islam.     But  the  Islam  of  the  Turk  is  a  differ- 


^^THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN''      249 

eut  thing  from  the  Islam  of  the  Arab.  That  was 
one  of  the  great  progressive  impulses  in  the  world 
of  men.  It  is  our  custom  to  underrate  the  Arab's 
contribution  to  civilisation  quite  absurdly  in  com- 
parison with  our  debt  to  the  Hebrew  and  Greek. 
It  is  to  the  initiatives  of  Islamic  culture,  for  ex- 
ample, that  we  owe  our  numerals,  the  bulk  of  mod- 
ern mathematics,  and  the  science  of  chemistry. 
The  British  have  already  set  themselves  to  the 
establishment  of  Islamic  university  teaching  in 
Egypt,  but  that  is  the  mere  first  stroke  of  the  pick 
at  the  opening  of  the  mine.  English,  French,  Rus- 
sian, Arabic,  Hindustani,  Spanish,  Italian:  these 
are  the  great  world  languages  that  most  concern 
the  future  of  civilisation  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  Peace  Alliance  that  impends.  No  country  can 
afford  to  neglect  any  of  those  languages,  but  as  a 
matter  of  primary  importance  I  would  say,  for  the 
British,  Hindustani,  for  the  Americans,  Russian  or 
Spanish,  for  the  French  and  Belgians  and  Italians, 
Arabic.  These  are  the  directions  in  which  the  duty 
of  understanding  is  most  urgent  for  each  of  these 
peoples,  and  the  path  of  opportunity  plainest. 

The  disposition  to  underrate  temporarily  de- 
pressed nations,  races,  and  cultures  is  a  most  irra- 
tional,  prevalent,   and   mischievous   form   of   stu- 


250  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

piditj.  It  distorts  our  entire  outlook  towards  the 
future.  The  British  reader  can  see  its  absurdity 
most  easily  when  he  reads  the  ravings  of  some  patri- 
otic German  upon  the  superiority  of  the  "  Teuton '' 
over  the  Italians  and  Greeks  —  to  whom  we  owe 
most  things  of  importance  in  European  civilisation. 
Equally  silly  stuff  is  still  to  be  read  in  British  and 
American  books  about  "  Asiatics."  And  was  there 
not  some  fearful  rubbish,  not  only  in  German  but 
in  English  and  French,  about  the  "  decadence  "  of 
France?  But  we  are  learning  —  rapidly.  When 
I  was  a  student  in  London,  thirty  years  ago,  we  re- 
garded Japan  as  a  fantastic  joke ;  the  comic  opera, 
The  MikadOy  still  preserves  that  foolish  phase  for 
the  admiration  of  posterity.  And  to-day  there  is 
a  quite  unjustifiable  tendency  to  ignore  the  quality 
of  the  Arab  and  of  his  religion.  Islam  is  an  open- 
air  religion,  noble  and  simple  in  its  broad  concep- 
tions ;  it  is  none  the  less  vital  from  Nigeria  to  China 
because  it  has  sickened  in  the  closeness  of  Con- 
stantinople. The  French,  the  Italians,  the  British 
have  to  reckon  with  Islam  and  the  Arab ;  where  the 
continental  deserts  are  there  the  Arabs  are  and 
there  is  Islam ;  their  culture  will  never  be  destroyed 
and  replaced  over  these  regions  by  Europeanism. 
The  Allies  who  prepare  the  Peace  of  the  World 


"THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN '^      251 

have  to  make  their  peace  with  that.  And  when  I 
foreshadow  this  necessary  liaison  of  the  French  and 
Arabic  cultures,  I  am  thinking  not  only  of  the  Arab 
that  is,  but  of  the  Arab  that  is  to  come.  The  whole 
trend  of  events  in  Asia  Minor,  the  breaking  up  and 
decapitation  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  and  the  Eu- 
phrates invasion,  points  to  a  great  revival  of  Meso- 
potamia —  at  first  under  European  direction.  The 
vast  system  of  irrigation  that  was  destroyed  by  the 
Mongol  armies  of  Hulugu  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
will  be  restored ;  the  desert  will  again  become  popu- 
lous. But  the  local  type  will  prevail.  The  new 
population  of  Mesopotamia  will  be  neither  Euro- 
pean nor  Indian;  it  will  be  Arabic;  and  with  its 
concentration  Arabic  will  lay  hold  of  the  printing 
press.  A  new  intellectual  movement  in  Islam,  a 
renascent  Bagdad,  is  as  inevitable  as  the  year  1950. 
I  have,  however,  gone  a  little  beyond  the  discus- 
sion of  the  future  of  the  barbaric  possessions  in 
these  anticipations  of  an  Arabic  co-operation  with 
the  Latin  peoples  in  the  reconstruction  of  Western 
Asia  and  the  barbaric  regions  of  North  and  Central 
Africa.  But  regions  of  administered  barbarism 
occur  not  only  in  Africa.  The  point  is  that  they 
are  administered,  and  that  their  economic  develop- 
ment is  very  largely  in  the  hands,  and  will  for  many 


252  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

generations  remain  in  the  hands,  of  the  possessing 
country.  Hitherto  their  administration  has  been 
in  the  interests  of  the  possessing  nation  alone. 
Their  acquisition  has  been  a  matter  of  bitter  rival- 
ries, their  continued  administration  upon  exclusive 
lines  is  bound  to  lead  to  dangerous  clashings.  The 
commonsense  of  the  situation  points  to  a  policy  of 
give  and  take,  in  which  throughout  the  possessions 
of  all  the  Pledged  Allies,  the  citizens  of  all  will 
have  more  or  less  equal  civil  advantages.  And  this 
means  some  consolidation  of  the  general  control  of 
those  Administered  Territories.  I  have  already 
hinted  at  the  possibility  that  the  now  exclusively 
British  navy  may  some  day  be  a  world  navy  con- 
trolled by  an  Admiralty  representing  a  group  of 
allies,  Australasia,  Canada,  Britain  and,  it  may  be, 
France  and  Russia  and  the  United  States.  To  those 
who  know  how  detached  the  British  Admiralty  is  at 
the  present  time  from  the  general  methods  of  Brit- 
ish political  life,  there  will  be  nothing  strange  in 
this  idea  of  its  completer  detachment.  Its  person- 
nel does  to  a  large  extent  constitute  a  class  apart. 
It  takes  its  boys  out  of  the  general  life  very  often  be- 
fore they  have  got  to  their  fourteenth  birthday.  It 
is  not  so  closely  linked  up  with  specific  British  so- 
cial elements,  with  political  parties  and  the  general 


"  THE  WHITE  MAN^S  BURTHEN  ''      253 

educational  system,  as  are  the  rest  of  the  national 
services.  There  is  nothing  so  very  fantastic  in  this 
idea  of  a  sort  of  World-Admiralty;  it  is  not  even 
completely  novel.  Such  bodies  as  the  Knights 
Templar  transcended  nationality  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  I  do  not  see  how  some  such  synthetic  control 
of  the  seas  is  to  be  avoided  in  the  future.  And  now 
coming  back  to  the  "White  Man's  Burthen/'  is 
there  not  a  possibility  that  such  a  board  of  marine 
and  international  control  as  the  naval  and  interna- 
tional problems  of  the  future  may  produce  ( or  some 
closely  parallel  body  with  a  stronger  Latin  ele- 
ment) would  also  be  capable  of  dealing  with  these 
barbaric  "  Administered  Territories  "?  A  day  may 
come  when  Tripoli,  Nigeria,  the  French  and  the 
Belgian  Congo  will  be  all  under  one  supreme  con- 
trol. We  may  be  laying  the  foundations  of  such  a 
system  to-day  unawares.  The  unstable  and  fluctu- 
ating conferences  of  the  Allies  to-day,  their  re- 
peated experiences  of  the  disadvantages  of  evan- 
escent and  discontinuous  co-ordinations,  may  press 
them  almost  unconsciously  towards  this  building 
up  of  things  greater  than  they  know. 

We  come  now  to  the  third  and  most  difficult  type 
of  overseas  "  possessions."  These  are  the  annexed 
or  conquered  regions  with  settled  populations  al- 


254  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

ready  having  a  national  tradition  and  culture  of 
their  own.  They  are,  to  put  it  bluntly,  the  sup- 
pressed, the  overlaid,  nations.  Now  I  am  a  writer 
rather  prejudiced  against  the  idea  of  nationality; 
my  habit  of  thought  is  cosmopolitan;  I  hate  and 
despise  a  shrewdsh  suspicion  of  foreigners  and  for- 
eign ways;  a  man  who  can  look  me  in  the  face, 
laugh  with  me,  speak  truth  and  deal  fairly,  is  my 
brother,  though  his  skin  is  as  black  as  ink  or  as 
yellow  as  an  evening  primrose.  But  I  have  to 
recognise  the  facts  of  the  case.  In  spite  of  all  my 
large  liberality,  I  find  it  less  irritating  to  be  ruled 
by  people  of  my  own  language  and  race  and  tradi- 
tion, and  I  perceive  that  for  the  mass  of  people 
alien  rule  is  intolerable.  Local  difference,  nation- 
ality, is  a  very  obstinate  thing.  Every  country 
tends  to  revert  to  its  natural  type.  Nationality 
will  out.  Once  a  people  has  emerged  above  the 
barbaric  stage  to  a  national  consciousness,  that  con- 
sciousness will  endure.  There  is  practically  al- 
ways going  to  be  an  Egypt,  a  Poland,  au  Armenia. 
There  is  no  Indian  nation,  there  never  has  been, 
but  there  are  manifestly  a  Bengal  and  a  Rajapu- 
tana,  there  is  manifestly  a  constellation  of  civilised 
nations  in  India.  Several  of  these  have  literatures 
and  traditions  that  extend  back  before  the  days 


'^  THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN  "      255 

when  the  Britains  painted  themselves  with  woad. 
Let  ns  deal  with  this  question  manly  with  refer- 
ence to  India.  What  is  said  will  apply  equally  to 
Burmah  or  Egypt  or  Armenia  or  —  to  come  back 
into  Europe  —  Poland. 

Now  I  have  talked,  I  suppose,  with  many  scores 
of  people  about  the  future  of  India,  and  I  have  never 
yet  met  any  one,  Indian  or  British,  who  thought  it 
desirable  that  the  British  should  evacuate  India  at 
once.  And  I  have  never  yet  met  any  one  who  did 
not  think  that  ultimately  the  British  must  let  the 
Indian  nations  control  their  own  destinies.  There 
are  really  not  two  opposite  opinions  about  the  des- 
tiny of  India,  but  only  differences  of  opinion  as  to 
the  length  of  time  in  which  that  destiny  is  to  be 
achieved.  Many  Indians- think  (and  I  agree  with 
them)  that  India  might  be  a  confederation  of  sover- 
eign States  in  close  alliance  with  the  British  Em- 
pire and  its  Allies  within  the  space  of  fifty  years  or 
so.  The  opposite  extreme  was  expressed  by  an  old 
weary  Indian  administrator  who  told  me,  "  Per- 
haps they  may  begin  to  be  capable  of  self-govern- 
ment in  four  or  five  hundred  years."  These  are 
the  extreme  Liberal  and  the  extreme  Tory  positions 
in  this  question.  It  is  a  choice  between  decades 
and  centuries.     There  is  no  denial  of  the  inevita- 


256  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

bility  of  ultimate  restoration.  No  one  of  any  ex- 
perience believes  the  British  administration  in 
India  is  an  eternal  institution. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  cant  in  this  matter  in 
Great  Britain.  Genteel  English  people  with  rela- 
tions in  the  Indian  Civil  Service  and  habits  of  self- 
delusion,  believe  that  Indians  are  "  grateful "  for 
British  rule.  The  sort  of  ''  patriotic  ''  self -flattery 
that  prevailed  in  the  Victorian  age,  and  which  is 
so  closely  akin  to  contemporary  German  follies, 
fostered  and  cultivated  this  sweet  delusion.  There 
are  no  doubt  old  ladies  in  Germany  to-day  who  be- 
lieve that  Belgium  will  presently  be  "  grateful '' 
for  the  present  German  administration.  Let  us 
clear  our  minds  of  such  cant.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
no  Indians  really  like  British  rule  or  think  of  it  as 
anything  better  than  a  necessary,  temporary  evil. 
Let  me  put  the  parallel  case  to  an  Englishman  or 
a  Frenchman.  Through  various  political  inepti- 
tudes our  country  has,  we  will  suppose,  fallen  under 
the  rule  of  the  Chinese.  They  administer  it,  we 
will  further  assume,  with  an  efficiency  and  honesty 
unparalleled  in  the  bad  old  times  of  our  lawyer- 
politicians.  They  do  not  admit  us  to  the  higher 
branches  of  the  administration ;  they  go  about  our 


"THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN''      257 

country  wearing  a  strange  costume,  professing  a 
strange  religion  —  which  implies  that  ours  is 
wrong  —  speaking  an  unfamiliar  tongue.  They 
control  our  financial  system  and  our  economic  de- 
velopment —  on  Chinese  lines  of  the  highest  merit. 
They  take  the  utmost  care  of  our  Gothic  cathedrals 
for  us.  They  put  our  dearest  racial  possessions 
into  museums  and  admire  them  very  much  indeed. 
They  teach  our  young  men  to  fly  kites  and  eat  bird's 
nest  soup.  They  do  all  that  a  well-bred  people  can 
do,  to  conceal  their  habit  and  persuasion  of  a  racial 
superiority.  But  they  keep  up  their  "prestige." 
.  .  .  You  know,  we  shouldn't  love  them.  It  really 
isn't  a  question  of  whether  they  rule  well  or  ill, 
but  that  the  position  is  against  certain  funda- 
mentals of  human  nature.  The  only  possible  foot- 
ing upon  which  we  could  meet  them  with  comfort- 
able minds,  would  be  the  footing  that  we  and  they 
were  discussing  the  terms  of  the  restoration  of  our 
country.  Then  indeed  we  might  almost  feel 
friendly  with  them.  That  is  the  case  with  all  civil- 
ised "possessions."  The  only  terms  upon  which 
educated  British  and  Indians  can  meet  to-day  with 
any  comfort  is  precisely  that.  The  living  inter- 
course of  the  British  and  Indian  mind  to-day  is  the 


258  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

discussion  of  the  restoration.  Everything  else  is 
humbug  on  the  one  side  and  self-deception  on  the 
other. 

It  is  idle  to  speak  of  the  British  occupation  of 
India  as  a  conquest  or  a  robbery.  It  is  a  fashion 
of  much  "  advanced "  literature  in  Europe  to  as- 
sume that  the  European  rule  of  various  Asiatic 
countries  is  the  result  of  deliberate  conquest  with 
a  view  to  spoliation.  But  that  is  only  the  ugly  side 
of  the  facts.  Cases  of  the  deliberate  invasion  and 
spoliation  of  one  country  by  another  have  been  very 
rare  in  the  history  of  the  last  three  centuries. 
There  has  always  been  an  excuse,  and  there  has  al- 
ways been  a  percentage  of  truth  in  the  excuse.  The 
history  of  every  country  contains  phases  of  politi- 
cal ineptitude  in  which  that  country  becomes  so 
misgoverned  as  to  be  not  only  a  nuisance  to  the  for- 
eigner within  its  borders  but  a  danger  to  its  neigh- 
bours. Mexico  is  in  such  a  phase  to-day.  And 
most  of  the  aggressions  and  annexations  of  the  mod- 
ern period  have  arisen  out  of  the  inconveniences 
and  reasonable  fears  caused  by  such  an  inept  phase. 
I  am  a  persistent  advocate  for  the  restoration  of 
Poland,  but  at  the  same  time  it  is  very  plain  to  me 
that  it  is  a  mere  travesty  of  the  facts  to  say  that 
Poland  was  a  white  lamb  of  a  countrv  torn  to 


"THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN"      259 

pieces  by  three  wicked  neighbours.  Poland  in  the 
eighteenth  century  was  a  dangerous  political  mud- 
dle, uncertain  of  her  monarchy,  her  policy,  her  af- 
finities. She  tempted  her  neighbours,  but  also  she 
threatened  them  because  there  was  no  guarantee 
that  she  might  not  fall  under  the  tutelage  of  one  of 
them  and  become  a  weapon  against  the  others. 
The  division  of  Poland  was  an  outrage  upon  the 
Polish  people,  but  it  was  largely  dictated  by  an  hon- 
est desire  to  settle  a  dangerous  possibility.  It 
seemed  less  injurious  than  the  possibility  of  a  vacil- 
lating, independent  Poland  playing  off  one  neigh- 
bour against  another.  That  possibility  will  still  be 
present  in  the  minds  of  the  diplomatists  who  will 
determine  the  settlement  after  the  war.  Until  the 
Poles  make  up  their  minds,  and  either  convince  the 
Russians  that  they  are  on  the  side  of  Russia  and 
Bohemia  against  Germany  for  ever  more,  or  the 
Germans  that  they  are  willing  to  be  Posenised,  they 
will  live  between  two  distrustful  enemies.  The 
Poles  need  to  think  of  the  future  more  and  the 
wrongs  of  Poland  less.  They  want  less  patriotic 
intrigue  and  more  racial  self-respect.  They  are 
not  only  Poles  but  members  of  a  greater  brother- 
hood. My  impression  is  that  Poland  will  "  go 
Slav '' —  in  spite  of  Cracow.     But  I  am  not  sure. 


260  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

I  am  haunted  by  the  fear  that  Poland  may  still  find 
her  future  hampered  by  Poles  who  are,  as  people 
say,  "  too  clever  by  half."  An  incalculable  Poland 
cannot  be  and  will  not  be  tolerated  by  the  rest  of 
Europe. 

And  the  overspreading  of  India  by  the  British 
was  in  the  same  way  very  clearly  done  under  com- 
pulsion, first  lest  the  Dutch  or  French  should  ex- 
ploit the  vast  resources  of  the  peninsula  against 
Britain,  and  then  for  fear  of  a  Russian  exploita- 
tion. I  am  no  apologist  for  British  rule  in  India ; 
I  think  we  have  neglected  vast  opportunities  there ; 
it  was  our  business  from  the  outset  to  build  up  a 
free  and  friendly  Indian  confederation,  and  we 
have  done  not  a  tithe  of  what  we  might  have  done 
to  that  end.  But  then  we  have  not  done  a  little  of 
what  we  might  have  done  for  our  own  country. 
Nevertheless  we  have  our  case  to  plead,  not  only 
for  going  to  India  but  —  with  the  Berlin  papers 
still  babbling  of  Bagdad  and  beyond  *  —  of  sticking 
there  very  grimly.  And  so  too  the  British  have  a 
fairly  sound  excuse  for  grabbing  Egypt  in  their 
fear  lest  in  its  phase  of  political  ineptitude  it 
should  be  the  means  of  strangling  the  British  Em- 
pire as  the  Turk  in  Constantinople  has  been  used 

*  This  was  written  late  in  February,  1916. 


"THE  WHITE  MAN'S  BURTHEN '^      261 

to  strangle  the  Russian.  None  of  these  justifica- 
tions, I  admit,  are  complete,  but  all  deserve  consid- 
eration. It  is  no  good  arguing  about  the  finer 
ethics  of  the  things  that  are;  the  business  of  sane 
men  is  to  get  things  better.  The  business  of  all 
sane  men  in  all  the  countries  of  the  Pledged  Allies 
and  in  America  is  manifestly  to  sink  petty  jealous- 
ies and  a  suicidal  competitiveness,  and  to  organise 
co-operation  with  all  the  intellectual  forces  they 
can  find  or  develop  in  the  subject  countries,  to  con- 
vert these  inept  national  systems  into  politically  ef- 
ficient independent  organisations  in  a  world  peace 
alliance.  If  we  fail  to  do  that,  then  all  the  inept 
States  and  all  the  subject  States  about  the  world 
will  become  one  great  field  for  the  sowing  of  tares 
by  the  enemy. 

So  that  with  regard  to  the  civilised  just  as  with 
regard  to  the  barbaric  regions  of  the  "  possessions  " 
of  the  European-centred  empires,  we  come  to  the 
same  conclusion.  That  on  the  whole  the  path  of 
safety  lies  in  the  direction  of  pooling  them  and  of 
declaring  a  common  policy  of  progressive  develop- 
ment leading  to  equality.  The  pattern  of  the 
United  States,  in  which  the  procedure  is  first  the 
annexation  of  "  territories ''  and  then  their  eleva- 
tion to  the  rank  of  "  States,''  must,  with  of  course 


262  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

far  more  difficulty  and  complication,  be  the  pattern 
for  the  "  empires  "  of  to-day  —  so  far  as  they  are 
regions  of  alien  population.  The  path  of  the  Do- 
minions, settled  by  emigrants  akin  to  the  home  pop- 
ulation, Siberia,  Canada,  and  so  forth,  to  equal 
citizenship  with  the  people  of  the  mother  country, 
is  by  comparison  simple  and  plain. 

And  so  the  discussion  of  the  future  of  the  over- 
seas "  empires  "  brings  us  again  to  the  same  realisa- 
tion to  which  the  discussion  of  nearly  every  great 
issue  arising  out  of  this  war  has  pointed,  the  real- 
isation of  the  imperative  necessity  of  some  great 
council  or  conference,  some  permanent  overriding 
body,  call  it  what  you  will,  that  will  deal  with 
things  more  broadly  than  any  "  nationalism  '^  or 
"patriotic  imperialism"  can  possibly  do.  That 
body  must  come  into  human  affairs.  Upon  the 
courage  and  imagination  of  living  statesmen  it  de- 
pends whether  it  will  come  simply  and  directly  into 
concrete  reality  or  whether  it  will  materialise 
slowly  through,  it  may  be,  centuries  of  blood  and 
blundering  from  such  phantom  anticipations  as 
this,  anticipations  that  now  haunt  the  thoughts  of 
all  politically-minded  men. 


XII 

THE  OUTLOOK  FOE  THE  GERMANS 

§  1 
Whatever  some  of  us  among  the  Allies  may  say, 
the  future  of  Germany  lies  with  Germany.  The  ut- 
most ambition  of  the  Allies  falls  far  short  of  de- 
stroying or  obliterating  Germany ;  it  is  to  give  the 
Germans  so  thorough  and  memorable  an  experience 
of  war  that  they  will  want  no  more  of  it  for  a  few 
generations,  and,  failing  the  learning  of  that  les- 
son, to  make  sure  that  they  will  not  be  in  a  position 
to  resume  their  military  aggressions  upon  man- 
kind, with  any  hope  of  success.  After  all  it  is  not 
the  will  of  the  Allies  that  has  determined  even  this 
resolve.  It  is  the  declared  and  manifest  will  of 
Germany  to  become  predominant  iu  the  w^orld,  that 
has  created  the  Alliance  against  Germany,  and 
forged  and  tempered  our  implacable  resolution  to 
bring  militarist  Germany  down.  And  the  na- 
ture of  the  coming  peace  and  the  politics  that 
will  follow  the  peace  are  much  more  dependent 

263 


264  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

upon    German    affairs    than    upon    anything   else 
whatever. 

This  is  so  clearly  understood  in  Great  Britain 
that  there  is  scarcely  a  newspaper  that  does  not 
devote  two  or  three  columns  daily  to  extracts  from 
the  German  newspapers,  and  from  letters  found 
upon  German  killed,  wounded,  or  prisoners,  and  to 
letters  and  descriptive  articles  from  neutrals  upon 
the  state  of  the  German  mind.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  British  intelligence  has  grasped  and 
kept  its  hold  upon  the  real  issue  of  this  war  with 
an  unprecedented  clarity.  At  the  outset  there 
came  declarations  from  nearly  every  type  of  British 
opinion  that  this  war  was  a  war  against  the  Hohen- 
zollern  militarist  idea,  against  Prussianism  and 
not  against  Germany.  In  that  respect  Britain  has 
documented  herself  up  to  the  hilt.  There  have 
been,  of  course,  a  number  of  passionate  outcries  and 
wild  accusations  against  Germans,  as  a  race,  during 
the  course  of  the  struggle ;  but  to  this  day  opinion 
is  steadfast  not  only  in  Britain,  but  if  I  may  judge 
from  the  papers  I  read  and  the  talk  I  hear,  through- 
out the  whole  English-speaking  community,  that 
this  is  a  war  not  of  races  but  ideas.  I  am  so  cer- 
tain of  this  that  I  would  say  if  Germany  by  some 
swift  convulsion  expelled  her  dynasty  and  turned 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      265 

herself  into  a  republic,  it  would  be  impossible  for 
the  British  Government  to  continue  the  war  for 
long,  whether  it  wanted  to  do  so  or  not.  The  forces 
in  favour  of  reconciliation  would  be  too  strong. 
There  would  be  a  complete  revulsion  from  the  pres- 
ent determination  to  continue  the  war  to  its  bitter 
but  conclusive  end. 

It  is  fairly  evident  that  the  present  German  Gov- 
ernment understands  this  frame  of  mind  quite 
clearly,  and  is  extremely  anxious  to  keep  it  from 
the  knowledge  of  the  German  peoples.  Every  act 
or  word  from  a  British  source  that  suggests  an  im- 
placable enmity  against  the  Germans  as  a  people, 
every  war-time  caricature  and  insult,  is  brought  to 
their  knowledge.  It  is  the  manifest  interest  of  the 
Hohenzollerns  and  Prussianism  to  make  this  strug- 
gle a  race  struggle  and  not  merely  a  political  strug- 
gle, and  to  keep  a  wider  breach  between  the  peoples 
than  between  the  governments.  The  "  made  in 
Germany  "  grievance  has  been  used  to  the  utmost 
against  Great  Britain,  as  an  indication  of  race  hos- 
tility. The  everyday  young  German  believes  firmly 
that  it  was  a  blow  aimed  specially  at  Germany; 
that  no  such  regulation  affected  any  goods  but  Ger- 
man goods.  And  the  English,  with  their  charac- 
teristic heedlessness,  have  never  troubled  to  disil- 


266  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

liision  him.  But  even  the  British  caricaturist  and 
the  British  soldier  betray  their  fundamental  opin- 
ion of  the  matter  in  their  very  insults.  They  will 
not  use  a  word  of  abuse  for  the  Germans  as  Ger- 
mans; they  call  them  "Huns,"  because  they  are 
thinking  of  Attila,  because  they  are  thinking  of 
them  as  invaders  under  a  monarch  of  peaceful 
France  and  Belgium  and  not  as  a  people  living  in 
a  land  of  their  own. 

In  Great  Britain  there  is  to  this  day  so  little  hos- 
tility for  Germans  as  such,  that  recently  a  nephew 
of  Lord  Haldane's,  Sir  George  Makgill,  has  consid- 
ered it  advisable  to  manufacture  race  hostility  and 
provide  the  Hohenzollerns  with  instances  and  quo- 
tations through  the  exertions  of  a  preposterous 
Anti-German  League.  Disregarding  the  essential 
evils  of  the  Prussian  idea  this  mischievous  organ- 
isation  has  set  itself  to  persuade  the  British  people 
that  the  Germans  are  diabolical  as  a  race.  It  has 
displayed  great  energy  and  ingenuity  in  pestering 
and  insulting  naturalised  Germans  and  people  of 
German  origin  in  Britain  —  below  the  rank  of  the 
royal  family  that  is  —  and  in  making  enduring  bad 
blood  between  them  and  the  authentic  British.  It 
busies  itself  in  breaking  up  meetings  at  which  sen- 
timents friendly  to  Germany  might  be  expressed, 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      267 

sentiments  whicli,  if  they  could  be  conveyed  to  Ger- 
man hearers,  would  certainly  go  far  to  weaken  the 
determination  of  the  German  social  democracy  to 
fight  to  the  end.  There  can,  of  course,  be  no  doubt 
of  the  good  faith  of  Sir  George  Makgill,  but  he 
could  do  the  Kaiser  no  better  service  than  to  help 
in  consolidating  every  rank  and  class  of  German, 
by  this  organisation  of  foolish  violence  of  speech 
and  act,  by  this  profession  of  an  irrational  and  im- 
placable hostility.  His  practical  influence  over 
here  is  trivial,  thanks  to  the  general  good  sense  and 
the  love  of  fair  play  in  our  peoj)le,  but  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  his  intentions  are  about  as  injuri- 
ous to  the  future  peace  of  the  world  as  any  inten- 
tions could  be,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  in- 
telligent use  is  made  in  Germany  of  the  frothings 
and  ravings  of  his  followers.  ^'  Here  you  see  is  the 
disposition  of  the  English,''  the  imperialists  will 
say  to  German  pacificists.  "  They  are  dangerous 
lunatics.  Clearly  we  must  stick  together  to  the 
end."  .  .  . 

The  stuff  of  Sir  George  Makgill's  league  must  not 
be  taken  as  representative  of  any  considerable  sec- 
tion of  British  opinion,  which  is  as  a  whole  nearly 
as  free  from  any  sustained  hatred  of  the  Germans 
as  it  was  at  the  beginning  of  the  w^ar.     There  are. 


268  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

of  course,  waves  of  indignation  at  such  deliberate 
atrocities  as  the  Lusitania  outrage  or  the  Zeppelin 
raids.  Wittenburg  will  not  early  be  forgotten,  but 
it  would  take  many  Sir  George  Makgills  to  divert 
British  anger  from  the  responsible  German  Govern- 
ment to  the  German  masses. 

That  lack  of  any  essential  hatred  does  not  mean 
that  British  opinion  is  not  solidly  for  the  continu- 
ation of  this  war  against  militarist  imperialism  to 
its  complete  and  final  defeat.  But  if  that  can  be 
defeated  to  any  extent  in  Germany  by  the  Germans, 
if  the  way  opens  to  a  Germany  as  unmilitary  and 
pacific  as  was  Great  Britain  before  this  war,  there 
remains  from  the  British  point  of  view  nothing  else 
to  fight  about.  With  the  Germany  of  Vorwaerts 
which,  I  understand,  would  evacuate  and  compen- 
sate Belgium  and  Serbia,  set  up  a  buffer  State  in 
Alsace-Lorraine  and  another  in  a  restored  Poland 
(including  Posen)  the  spirit  of  the  Allies  has  no 
profound  quarrel  at  all,  has  never  had  any  quarrel. 
We  would  only  too  gladly  meet  that  Germany  at  a 
green  table  to-morrow,  and  set  to  work  arranging 
the  compensation  of  Belgium  and  Serbia,  and  trac- 
ing over  the  outlines  of  the  natural  map  of  man- 
kind, the  new  political  map  of  Europe. 

Still  it  must  be  admitted  that  not  only  in  Great 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      269 

Britain  but  in  all  the  allied  countries  one  finds  a 
certain  active  minority  corresponding  to  Sir  George 
Makgill's  noisy  following,  who  profess  to  believe 
that  all  Germans  to  the  third  and  fourth  generation 
(save  and  except  the  Hanoverian  royal  family  dom- 
iciled in  Great  Britain)  are  a  vile,  treacherous,  and 
impossible  race,  a  race  animated  by  an  incredible 
racial  vanity,  a  race  which  is  indeed  scarcely  any- 
thing but  a  conspiracy  against  the  rest  of  mankind. 
The  ravings  of  many  of  these  people  can  only  be 
paralleled  by  the  stuff  about  the  cunning  of  the 
Jesuits  that  once  circulated  in  ultra-Protestant  cir- 
cles in  England.  Elderly  Protestant  ladies  used 
to  look  under  the  bed  and  in  the  cupboard  every 
night  for  a  Jesuit,  just  as  nowadays  they  look  for  a 
German  spy,  and  as  no  doubt  old  German  ladies 
now  look  for  Sir  Edward  Grey.  It  may  be  useful 
therefore,  at  the  present  time,  to  point  out  that  not 
only  is  the  aggressive  German  idea  not  peculiar  to 
Germany,  not  only  are  there  endless  utterances  of 
French  Chauvinists  and  British  imperialists  to  be 
found  entirely  as  vain,  unreasonable  and  aggres- 
sive, but  that  German  militarist  imperialism  is  so 
little  representative  of  the  German  quality,  that 
scarcely  one  of  its  leading  exponents  is  a  genuine 
German. 


270  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

Of  course  there  is  no  denying  that  the  Germans 
are  a  very  distinctive  people,  as  distinctive  as  the 
French.  But  their  distinctions  are  not  diabolical. 
Until  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  it  was 
the  fashion  to  regard  them  as  a  race  of  philosophi- 
cal incompetents.  Their  reputation  as  a  people  of 
exceptionally  military  quality  sprang  up  in  the 
weed-bed  of  human  delusions  between  1866  and 
1872 ;  it  will  certainly  not  survive  this  war.  Their 
reputation  for  organisation  is  another  matter. 
They  are  an  orderly,  industrious,  and  painstaking 
people,  they  have  a  great  respect  for  science,  for 
formal  education,  and  for  authority.  It  is  their 
respect  for  education  which  has  chiefly  betrayed 
them,  and  made  them  the  instrument  of  Hohenzol- 
lern  folly.  Mr.  F.  M.  Hueffer  has  shown  this  quite 
conclusively  in  his  admirable  but  ill-named  book, 
When  Blood  is  Their  Argument.  Their  minds 
have  been  systematically  corrupted  by  base  his- 
torical teaching,  and  the  inculcation  of  a  rancid 
patriotism.  They  are  a  people  under  the  sway  of 
organised  suggestion.  This  catastrophic  war  and 
its  preparation  have  been  their  chief  business  for 
half  a  century;  none  the  less  their  peculiar  quali- 
ties have  still  been  displayed  during  that  period; 
they  have  still  been  able  to  lead  the  world  in  several 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      271 

branches  of  social  organisation  and  in  the  methodi- 
cal development  of  technical  science.  Systems  of 
ideas  are  perhaps  more  readily  shattered  than 
built  up;  the  aggressive  patriotism  of  many  Ger- 
mans must  be  already  darkened  by  serious  doubts, 
and  I  see  no  inherent  impossibility  in  hoping  that 
the  mass  of  the  Germans  may  be  restored  to  the 
common  sanity  of  mankind,  even  in  the  twenty  or 
thirty  years  of  life  that  perhaps  still  remain  for  me. 
Consider  the  names  of  the  chief  exponents  of  the 
aggressive  German  idea,  and  you  will  find  that  not 
one  is  German.  The  first  begetter  of  Nietzsche's 
"  blond  beast,"  and  of  all  that  great  flood  of  rub- 
bish about  a  strange  superior  race  with  whitish  hair 
and  blue  eyes,  that  has  so  fatally  rotted  the  Ger- 
man imagination,  was  a  Frenchman  named  Gobi- 
neau.  We  British  are  not  altogether  free  from  the 
disease.  As  a  small  boy  I  read  the  History  of  J. 
R.  Green,  and  fed  my  pride  upon  the  peculiar  vir- 
tues of  my  Anglo-Saxon  blood.  "  Cp."  as  they  say 
in  footnotes,  Carlyle  and  Froude.  It  was  not  a 
German  but  a  renegade  Englishman  of  the  English- 
man-hating whig  type,  Mr.  Houston  Stewart  Cham- 
berlain, who  carried  the  Gobineau  theory  to  that 
delirious  level  which  claims  Dante  and  Leonardo 
as  Germans,  and  again  it  was  not  a  German  but  a 


272  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

British  peer,  still  among  us,  Lord  Redesdale,  who 
in  his  eulogistic  preface  to  the  English  transla- 
tion of  Chamberlain's  torrent  of  folly,  hinted  not 
obscurely  that  the  real  father  of  Christ  was  not  the 
Jew,  Joseph,  but  a  much  more  Germanic  person. 
Neither  Clausewitz,  who  first  impressed  upon  the 
German  mind  the  theory  of  ruthless  warfare,  nor 
Bernhardi,  nor  Treitschke,  who  did  as  much  to 
build  up  the  Emperor^s  political  imagination,  strike 
one  as  bearing  particularly  German  names.  There 
are  indeed  very  grave  grounds  for  the  German  com- 
plaint that  Germany  has  been  the  victim  of  alien 
flattery  and  alien  precedents.  And  what  after  all 
is  the  Prussian  dream  of  world  empire  but  an  imi- 
tative response  to  the  British  Empire  and  the  ad- 
venture of  Napoleon.  The  very  title  of  the  Ger- 
man emperor  is  the  name  of  an  Italian,  Caesar,  far 
gone  in  decay.  And  the  backbone  of  the  German 
system  at  the  present  time  is  the  Prussian,  who  is 
not  really  a  German  at  all  but  a  Germanised  Wend. 
Take  away  the  imported  and  imposed  elements 
from  the  things  we  fight  to-day,  leave  nothing  but 
what  is  purely  and  originally  German,  and  you 
leave  very  little.  We  fight  dynastic  ambition,  na- 
tional vanity,  greed,  and  the  fruits  of  fifty  years  of 
basely  conceived  and  efficiently  conducted  education. 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      273 

The  majority  of  sensible  and  influential  Eng- 
lishmen are  fully  aware  of  these  facts.  This  does 
not  alter  their  resolution  to  beat  Germany  thor- 
oughly and  finally,  and,  if  Germany  remains  Ho- 
henzollern  after  the  war,  to  do  their  utmost  to  ring 
her  in  with  commercial  alliances,  tariffs,  navigation 
and  exclusion  laws  that  will  keep  her  poor  and 
powerless  and  out  of  mischief  so  long  as  her  vice 
remains  in  her.  But  these  considerations  of  the 
essential  innocence  of  the  German  do  make  all  this 
systematic  hostility,  which  the  British  have  had 
forced  upon  them,  a  very  uncongenial  and  reluc- 
tant hostility.  Pro-civilisation,  and  not  Anti-Ger- 
man, is  the  purpose  of  the  Allies.  And  the  specu- 
lation of  just  how  relentlessly  and  for  how  long 
this  ring  of  suspicion  and  precaution  need  be  main- 
tained about  Germany,  of  how  soon  the  German 
may  decide  to  become  once  more  a  good  European, 
is  one  of  extraordinary  interest  to  every  civilised 
man.  In  other  words,  what  are  the  prospects  of  a 
fairly  fundamental  revolution  in  German  life  and 
thought  and  affairs  in  the  years  immediately  be- 
fore us? 

§  2 

In  a  sense  every  European  country  must  undergo 
revolutionary  changes  as  a  consequence  of  the  enor- 


274  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

mous  economic  exhaustion  and  social  dislocations 
of  this  war.  But  what  I  propose  to  discuss  here  is 
the  possibility  of  a  real  political  revolution,  in  the 
narrower  sense  of  the  word,  in  Germany,  a  revolu- 
tion that  will  end  the  Hohenzollern  system,  the 
German  dynastic  system,  altogether,  that  will  dem- 
ocratise Prussia  and  put  an  end  for  ever  to  that 
secretive  scheming  of  military  aggressions  which  is 
the  essential  quarrel  of  Europe  with  Germany.  It 
is  the  most  momentous  possibility  of  our  times,  be- 
cause it  opens  the  way  to  an  alternative  state  of 
affairs  that  may  supersede  the  armed  watching  and 
systematic  war  of  tariffs,  prohibitions,  and  exclu- 
sions against  the  Central  empires  that  must  quite 
unavoidably  be  the  future  attitude  of  the  Pledged 
Allies  to  any  survival  of  the  Hohenzollern  empire. 
We  have  to  bear  in  mind  that  in  this  discussion 
we  are  dealing  with  something  very  new  and  quite 
untried  hitherto  by  anything  but  success,  that  new 
Germany  whose  unification  began  with  the  spolia- 
tion of  Denmark  and  was  completed  at  Versailles. 
It  is  not  a  man's  lifetime  old.  Under  the  state 
socialism  and  aggressive  militarism  of  the  Hohen- 
zollern regime  it  had  been  led  to  a  level  of  unex- 
ampled pride  and  prosperity,  and  it  plunged  shout- 
ing and  singing  into  this  war,  confident  of  victories. 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      275 

It  is  still  being  fed  with  dwindling  hopes  of  victory, 
no  longer  unstinted  hopes,  but  still  hopes  —  by  a 
sort  of  political  bread-card  system.  The  hopes  out- 
last the  bread-and-butter,  but  they  dwindle  and 
dwindle.  How  is  this  parvenu  people  going  to 
stand  the  cessation  of  hope,  the  realisation  of  the 
failure  and  fruitlessness  of  such  efforts  as  no  peo- 
ple on  earth  have  ever  made  before?  How  are  they 
going  to  behave  when  they  realise  fully  that  they 
have  suffered  and  died  and  starved  and  wasted  all 
their  land  in  vain?  When  they  learn  too  that  the 
cause  of  the  war  was  a  trick,  and  the  Russian  inva- 
sion a  lie?  They  have  a  large  democratic  Press 
that  will  not  hesitate  to  tell  them  that,  that  does 
already  to  the  best  of  its  ability  disillusion  them. 
They  are  a  carefully  trained  and  educated  and  dis- 
ciplined people  it  is  true ;  *  but  the  solicitude  of 
the  German  Government  everywhere  apparent,  thus 
to  keep  the  resentment  of  the  people  directed  to  the 
proper  quarter,  is,  I  think,  just  one  of  the  things 
that  are  indicative  of  the  revolutionary  possibilities 

*  A  recent  circular,  which  Vorwaerts  quotes  sent  by  the  edu- 
cation officials  to  the  teachers  of  Frankfurt-am-Main  points  out 
the  necessity  of  the  "  beautiful  task  "  of  inculcating  a  deep  love 
for  the  House  of  Hohenzollern  (Crown  Prince,  grin  and  all)  and 
concludes,  "  All  efforts  to  excuse  or  minimise  or  explain  the 
disgraceful  acts  which  our  enemies  have  committed  against  Ger- 
mans all  over  the  world  are  to  be  firmly  opposed  by  you  should 
you  see  any  signs  of  these  efforts  entering  the  schools." 


276  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

in  Germany.  The  Allied  Governments  let  opinion, 
both  in  their  own  countries  and  in  America,  shift 
for  itself ;  they  do  not  even  trouble  to  mitigate  the 
inevitable  exasperation  of  the  military  censorship 
by  an  intelligent  and  tactful  control.  The  German 
Government,  on  the  other  hand,  has  organised  the 
putting  of  the  blame  upon  other  shoulders  than  its 
own  elaborately  and  ably  from  the  very  beginning 
of  the  war.  It  must  know  its  own  people  best,  and 
I  do  not  see  why  it  should  do  this  if  there  were  not 
very  dangerous  possibilities  ahead  for  itself  in  the 
national  temperament. 

It  is  one  of  the  commonplaces  of  this  question 
that  in  the  past  the  Germans  have  alw^ays  been  loyal 
subjects  and  never  made  a  revolution.  It  is  al- 
leged that  there  has  never  been  a  German  republic. 
That  is  by  no  means  conclusively  true.  The 
nucleus  of  Swiss  freedom  was  the  German-speaking 
cantons  about  the  Lake  of  Lucerne ;  Tell  w^as  a  Ger- 
man, and  he  was  glorified  by  the  German  Schiller. 
No  doubt  the  Protestant  reformation  was  largely  a 
business  of  dukes  and  princes,  but  the  underlying 
spirit  of  that  revolt  also  lay  in  the  German  national 
character.  The  Anabaptist  insurrection  was  no 
mean  thing  in  rebellions,  and  the  history  of  the 
Dutch,  who  are,  after  all,  only  the  extreme  expres- 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      277 

sion  of  the  Low  German  type,  is  a  history  of  the 
most  stubborn  struggle  for  freedom  in  Europe. 
This  legend  of  German  docility  will  not  bear  close 
examination.  It  is  true  that  they  are  not  given  to 
spasmodic  outbreaks,  and  that  they  do  not  lend 
themselves  readily  to  intrigues  and  pronuncia- 
mentos,  but  there  is  every  reason  to  suppose  that 
they  have  the  heads  to  plan  and  the  wills  to  carry 
out  as  sound  and  orderly  and  effective  a  revolution 
as  any  people  in  Europe.  Before  the  war  drove 
them  frantic,  the  German  comic  papers  were  by  no 
means  suggestive  of  an  abject  worship  of  authority 
and  royalty  for  their  own  sakes.  The  teaching  of 
all  forms  of  morality  and  sentimentality  in  schools 
produces  not  only  belief,  but  reaction,  the  live- 
lier and  more  energetic  the  pupil  the  more  likely 
he  is  to  react  rather  than  accept.  Whatever  the 
feelings  of  the  old  women  of  Germany  may  be  to- 
wards the  Kaiser  and  his  family,  my  impression  of 
the  opinion  of  Germans  in  general  is  that  they  be- 
lieved firmly  in  empire.  Kaiser  and  militarism, 
wholly  and  solely  because  they  thought  these  things 
meant  security,  success,  triumph,  more  and  more 
w^ealth,  more  and  more  Germany,  and  all  that  had 
come  to  them  since  1871  carried  on  to  the  nth  de- 
gree. ...  I  do  not  think  that  all  the  schoolmasters 


278  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

of  Germany,  teaching  in  unison  at  the  tops  of  their 
voices,  will  sustain  that  belief  beyond  the  end  of  this 
war. 

At  present  every  discomfort  and  disappointment 
of  the  German  people  is  being  sedulously  diverted 
into  rage  against  the  Allies,  and  particularly 
against  the  English.  This  is  all  very  well  as  long 
as  the  war  goes  on  with  a  certain  effect  of  hopeful- 
ness. But  what  when  presently  the  beam  has  so 
tilted  against  Germany  that  an  unprofitable  peace 
has  become  urgent  and  inevitable?  How  can  the 
Hohenzollern  suddenly  abandon  his  pose  of  right- 
eous indigna'^ion  and  make  friends  with  the  ac- 
cursed enemy,  and  how  can  he  make  any  peace  at 
all  with  us  while  he  still  proclaims  us  accursed? 
Either  the  Emperor  has  to  go  to  his  people  and  say, 
"  We  promised  you  victory  and  it  is  defeat,'^  or  he 
has  to  say,  "  It  is  not  defeat,  but  we  are  going  to 
make  peace  with  these  Russian  barbarians  who  in- 
vaded us,  with  the  incompetent  English  who  be- 
trayed us,  with  all  these  degenerate  and  contempt- 
ible races  you  so  righteously  hate  and  despise,  upon 
such  terms  that  we  shall  never  be  able  to  attack 
them  again.  This  noble  and  wonderful  war  is  to 
end  in  this  futility  and  —  these  graves.  You  were 
tricked  into  it,  as  you  were  tricked  into  war  in 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      279 

1870  —  but  this  time  it  has  not  turned  out  quite  so 
well.  And  besides,  after  all,  we  find  we  can  con- 
tinue to  get  on  with  these  people."  .  .  . 

In  either  case,  I  do  not  see  how  he  can  keep  the 
habitual  and  cultivated  German  hate  pointing 
steadily  away  from  himself.  So  long  as  the  war  is 
going  on  that  may  be  done,  but  when  the  soldiers 
come  home  the  hate  will  come  home  as  well.  In 
times  of  war  peoples  may  hate  abroad  and  with 
some  unanimity.  But  after  the  war,  with  no  war 
going  on  or  any  prospect  of  a  fresh  war,  with  every 
exploiter  and  every  industrial  tyrant  who  has  made 
his  unobtrusive  profits  while  the  country  scowled 
and  spat  at  England,  stripped  of  the  cover  of  that 
excitement,  then  it  is  inevitable  that  much  of  this 
noble  hate  of  England  will  be  seen  for  the  cant  it 
is.  The  cultivated  hate  of  the  war  phase,  rein- 
forced by  the  fresh  hate  born  of  confusion  and 
misery,  will  swing  loose,  as  it  were,  seeking  dis- 
persedly  for  objects.  The  petty,  incessant  irrita- 
tions of  proximity  will  count  for  more;  the  na- 
tional idea  for  less.  The  Hohenzollerns  and  the 
Junkers  will  have  to  be  very  nimble  indeed  if  the 
German  accomplishment  of  hate  does  not  swing 
round  upon  them. 

It  is  a  common  hypothesis  with  those  who  specu- 


280  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

late  on  the  probable  effects  of  these  disilliision- 
ments,  that  Germany  may  break  up  again  into  its 
component  parts.  It  is  pointed  out  that  Germany 
is,  so  to  speak,  a  palimpsest,  that  the  broad  design 
of  the  great  black  eagle  and  the  imperial  crown 
are  but  newly  painted  over  a  great  number  of  par- 
ticularisms, and  that  these  particularisms  may  re- 
turn. The  empire  of  the  Germans  may  break  up 
again.  That  I  do  not  believe.  The  forces  that  uni- 
fied Germany  lie  deeper  than  the  Hohenzollern  ad- 
venture; print,  paper  and  the  spoken  word  have 
bound  Germany  now  into  one  people  for  all  time. 
None  the  less  those  previous  crowns  and  symbols 
that  still  show  through  the  paint  of  the  new  design 
may  help  greatly,  as  that  weakens  under  the  coming 
stresses,  to  disillusion  men  about  its  necessity. 
There  was,  they  will  be  reminded,  a  Germany  be- 
fore Prussia,  before  Austria  for  the  matter  of  that. 
The  empire  has  been  little  more  than  the  first  Ger- 
man experiment  in  unity.  It  is  a  new-fangled  thing 
that  came  and  may  go  again  —  leaving  Germany 
still  a  nation,  still  with  the  sense  of  a  common 
Fatherland. 

Let  us  consider  a  little  more  particularly  the  na- 
ture of  the  mass  of  population  whose  collective  ac- 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GEEMANS      281 

tion  in  the  years  immediately  ahead  of  us  we  are 
now  attempting  to  forecast.  Its  social  strata  are 
only  very  inexactly  equivalent  to  those  in  the  coun- 
tries of  the  Pledged  Allies.  First  there  are  the 
masses  of  the  people.  In  England  for  purposes  of 
edification  we  keep  up  the  legend  of  the  extreme 
efficiency  of  Germany,  the  high  level  of  German 
education,  and  so  forth.  The  truth  is  that  the  aver- 
age elementary  education  of  the  common  people  in 
Britain  is-  superior  to  that  of  Germany,  that  the 
domestic  efficiency  of  the  British  common  people  is 
greater,  their  moral  training  better,  and  their  per- 
sonal quality  higher.  This  is  shown  by  a  number 
of  quite  conclusive  facts  of  which  I  will  instance 
merely  the  higher  German  general  death  rate,  the 
higher  German  infantile  death  rate,  the  altogether 
disproportionate  percentage  of  crimes  of  violence  in 
Germany,  and  the  indisputable  personal  superiority 
of  the  British  private  soldier  over  his  German  anta- 
gonist. It  is  only  when  Ave  get  above  the  level  of 
the  masses  that  the  position  is  reversed.  The  ratio 
of  public  expenditure  upon  secondary  and  higher 
education  in  Germany  as  compared  with  the  ex- 
penditure upon  elementary  education  is  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  British  ratio.     Directly  we  come 


282  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

to  the  commercial,  directive,  official,  technical  and 
professional  classes  in  Germany,  we  come  to  classes 
far  more  highly  trained,  more  alert  intellectually, 
more  capable  of  collective  action,  and  more  ac- 
cessible to  general  ideas,  than  the  less  numerous 
and  less  important  corresponding  classes  in  Brit- 
ain. This  great  German  middle  class  is  the 
strength  and  substance  of  the  new  Germany ;  it  has 
increased  proportionally  to  the  classes  above  and 
below  it,  it  has  developed  almost  all  its  character- 
istics during  the  last  half  century.  At  its  lower 
fringe  it  comprehends  the  skilled  and  scientifically 
trained  artisans,  it  supplies  the  brains  of  social 
democracy,  and  it  reaches  up  to  the  world  of  finance 
and  quasi-state  enterprise.  And  it  is  the  "  dark 
horse ''  in  all  these  speculations. 

Hitherto  this  middle  class  has  been  growing  al- 
most unawares.  It  has  been  so  busy  coming  into 
existence  and  growing,  there  has  been  so  much  to 
do  since  1871,  that  it  has  had  scarcely  a  moment 
to  think  round  the  general  problem  of  politics  at 
all.  It  has  taken  the  new  empire  for  granted  as  a 
child  takes  its  home  for  granted,  and  its  state  of 
mind  to-day  must  be  rather  like  that  of  an  intelli- 
gent boy  who  suddenly  discovers  that  his  father's 
picturesque  and  wonderful  speculations  have  led 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      283 

to  his  arrest  and  brought  the  brokers  into  the  house, 
and  that  there  is  nothing  for  it  but  to  turn  to  and 
take  control  of  the  family  affairs. 

In  Germany,  the  most  antiquated  and  the  most 
modern  of  European  States,  the  old  dynastic  Ger- 
many of  the  princes  and  junkers  has  lasted  on  by 
virtue  of  exceptional  successes  and  prestige  into 
the  world  of  steel  and  electricity.  But  their  pres- 
tige has  paled  before  the  engineering  of  Krupp; 
their  success  evaporates.  A  new  nation  awakens 
to  self-consciousness  only  to  find  itself  betrayed 
into  apparently  irreconcilable  hostility  against  the 
rest  of  mankind.  .  .  . 

What  will  be  the  quality  of  the  monarch  and 
court  and  junkerdom  that  will  face  this  awaking 
new  Germany? 

The  monarch  will  be  before  very  long  the  present 
Crown  Prince.  The  Hohenzollerns  have  at  least 
the  merit  of  living  quickly,  and  the  present  Em- 
peror draws  near  his  allotted  term.  He  will  break 
a  record  in  his  family  if  he  lives  another  dozen 
years.  So  that  quite  soon  after  the  war  this  new 
disillusioned  Germany  will  be  contemplating  the 
imperial  graces  of  the  present  Crown  Prince.  In 
every  way  he  is  an  unattractive  and  uninspiring 
figure;  he  has  identified  himself  completely  with 


284  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

that  militarism  that  has  brought  about  the  Euro- 
pean catastrophe;  in  repudiating  him  Germany 
will  repudiate  her  essential  offence  against  civilisa- 
tion, and  his  appears  to  be  the  sort  of  personality 
that  it  is  a  pleasure  to  repudiate.  He  or  some 
kindred  regent  will  be  the  symbol  of  royalty  in  Ger- 
many through  all  those  years  of  maximum  stress 
and  hardship  ahead.  Throughout  the  greater  part 
of  Germany  the  tradition  of  loyalty  to  his  house  is 
not  a  century  old.  And  the  real  German  loyalty 
is  racial  and  national  far  more  than  dynastic.  It 
is  not  the  HohenzoUern  over  all  that  they  sing 
about;  it  is  Deutschland.  (And  —  as  in  the  case 
of  all  imperfectly  civilised  peoples  —  songs  of  hate 
for  foreigners.)  But  it  needed  a  decadent  young 
American  to  sing: 

"  Thou  Prince  of  Peace, 
Thou  God  of  War," 

to  the  dismal  rhetorician  of  Potsdam.  Real  em- 
perors reconcile  and  consolidate  peoples,  for  an  em- 
pire is  not  a  nation;  but  the  Hohenzollerns  have 
never  dared  to  be  anything  but  sedulously  na- 
tional, "  echt  Deutsch "  and  advocates  of  black- 
letter.  They  know  the  people  they  have  to  deal 
with. 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      285 

This  new  substantial  middle  mass  of  Germany 
has  never  been  on  friendly  terms  with  the  Germany 
of  the  court  and  the  landowner.  It  has  inherited 
a  burgerlich  tradition  and  resented  even  while  it 
tolerated  the  swagger  of  the  aristocratic  officer.  It 
tolerated  it  because  that  sort  of  thing  was  supposed 
to  be  necessary  to  the  national  success.  But  Mu- 
nich, the  comic  papers,  Herr  Harden,  Vorwaerts, 
speak,  I  think,  for  the  central  masses  of  German 
life,  far  more  truly  than  any  official  utterances  do. 
They  speak  in  a  voice  a  little  gross,  very  sensible, 
blunt,  with  a  kind  of  heavy  humour.  That  Ger- 
man voice  one  may  not  like,  but  one  must  needs  re- 
spect it.  It  is  at  any  rate  not  bombastic.  It  is 
essentially  honest.  When  the  imperial  eagle  comes 
home  with  half  its  feathers  out  like  a  crow  that  has 
met  a  bear ;  when  the  surviving  aristocratic  officers 
reappear  with  a  vastly  diminished  swagger  in  the 
biergartens,  I  believe  that  the  hitherto  acquiescent 
middle  classes  and  skilled  artisan  class  of  Germans 
will  entirely  disappoint  those  people  who  expect 
them  to  behave  either  with  servility  or  sentimental 
loyalty.  The  great  revolutionary  impulse  of  the 
French  was  passionate  and  generous.  The  revolu- 
tionary impulse  of  Germany  may  be  even  more 


286  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

deadly;  it  may  be  contemptuous.  It  may  be  they 
will  not  even  drag  emperor  and  nobles  down;  they 
will  shove  them  aside.  .  .  . 

In  all  these  matters  one  must  ask  the  reader  to 
enlarge  his  perspectives  at  least  as  far  back  as  the 
last  three  centuries.  The  galaxy  of  German  mon- 
archies that  has  overspread  so  much  of  Europe  is  a 
growth  of  hardly  more  than  two  centuries.  It  is  a 
phase  in  the  long  process  of  the  break-up  of  the 
Roman  Empire  and  of  the  catholic  system  that  in- 
herited its  tradition.  These  royalties  have  formed 
a  class  apart,  breeding  only  among  themselves,  and 
attempting  to  preserve  a  sort  of  caste  international- 
ism in  the  face  of  an  advance  in  human  intelligence, 
a  spread  of  printing,  reading,  and  writing  that 
makes  inevitably  for  the  recrudescence  of  national 
and  race  feeling,  and  the  increasing  participation 
of  the  people  in  government.  In  Russia  and  Eng- 
land alike  these  originally  German  dynasties  are 
meeting  the  problems  of  the  new  time  by  becoming 
national.  They  modify  themselves  from  year  to 
year.  The  time  when  Britain  will  again  have  a 
Queen  of  British  race  may  not  be  very  remote. 
The  days  when  the  affairs  of  Europe  could  be  dis- 
cussed at  Windsor  in  German  and  from  a  German 
standpoint  ended  with  the  death  of  Queen  Victoria, 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOE  THE  GERMANS      287 

and  it  is  only  in  such  improvised  courts  as  those  of 
Greece  and  Bulgaria  that  the  national  outlook  can 
still  be  contemplated  from  a  foreign  standpoint  and 
discussed  in  a  foreign  tongue.  The  age  when  the 
monarchical  system  made  the  courts  of  three-quar- 
ters of  Europe  a  German^s  Fatherland  has  ended 
for  ever.  And  with  that,  the  last  rational  advan- 
tage of  monarchy  and  royalist  sentimentality  dis- 
appears from  the  middle-class  German's  point  of 
view. 

So  it  seems  to  me  that  the  following  conclusions 
about  the  future  of  Germany  emerge  from  these 
considerations.  It  is  improbable  that  there  will  be 
any  such  revolution  as  overthrew  French  Imperial- 
ism in  1871 ;  the  new  Prussian  imperialism  is  closer 
to  the  tradition  of  the  people  and  much  more  firmly 
established  through  the  educational  propaganda  of 
the  past  half  century.  But  liberal  forces  in  Ger- 
many may  nevertheless  be  strong  enough  to  force  a 
peace  upon  the  Hohenzollern  empire  so  soon  as  any 
hopes  of  aggressive  successes  die  away,  before  the 
utmost  stage  of  exhaustion  is  reached,  early  in 
1917  perhaps  or  at  latest  in  1918.  This,  we  sup- 
pose, will  be  a  restrictive  peace  so  far  as  Germany 
is  concerned,  humiliating  her  and  hampering  her 
development.     The  German  press  will  talk  freely 


288  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

of  a  revanche  and  the  renewal  of  the  struggle,  and 
this  will  help  to  consolidate  the  Pledged  Allies  in 
their  resolves  to  hold  Germany  on  every  front  and 
to  retard  her  economic  and  financial  recovery.  The 
dynasty  will  lose  prestige  gradually,  the  true  story 
of  the  war  will  creep  slowly  into  the  German  con- 
sciousness, and  the  idea  of  a  middle-class  republic, 
which  like  the  French  republic  of  the  last  forty -five 
years  will  be  only  defensively  militant  and  essen- 
tially pacific  and  industrial,  will  become  more  and 
more  popular  in  the  country.  This  will  have  the 
support  of  strong  journalists,  journalists  of  the 
Harden  type  for  example.  The  dynasty  tends  to 
become  degenerate,  so  that  the  probability  of  either 
some  gross  scandals  or  an  ill-advised  reactionary 
movement  back  to  absolutism  may  develop  a  crisis 
within  a  few  years  of  the  peace  settlement.  The 
mercantile  and  professional  classes  will  join  hands 
with  the  social  democrats  to  remove  the  decaying 
incubus  of  the  Hohenzollern  system,  and  Germany 
will  become  a  more  modern  and  larger  repetition 
of  the  Third  French  republic.  This  collapse  of  the 
Germanic  monarchical  system  may  spread  consid- 
erably beyond  the  limits  of  the  German  empire.  It 
will  probably  be  effected  without  much  violence  as 
a  consequence  of  the  convergence  and  maturity  of 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      289 

many  streams  of  very  obvious  thought.  Many  of 
the  monarchs  concerned  may  find  themselves  still 
left  with  their  titles,  palaces,  and  personal  estates, 
and  merely  deprived  of  their  last  vestiges  of  legal 
power.  The  way  will  thus  be  opened  for  a  gradual 
renewal  of  good  feeling  between  the  people  of  Ger- 
many and  the  western  Europeans.  This  renewal 
will  be  greatly  facilitated  by  the  inevitable  fall  in 
the  German  birth  rate  that  the  shortage  and  econ- 
omies of  this  war  will  have  done  much  to  promote, 
and  by  the  correlated  discrediting  of  the  expan- 
sionist idea.  By  1960  or  so,  the  alteration  of  per- 
spectives will  have  gone  so  far  that  historians  will 
be  a  little  perplexed  to  explain  the  causes  of  the 
Great  War.  The  militarist  monomania  of  Ger- 
many will  have  become  incomprehensible ;  her  Welt 
Politik  literature  incredible  and  unreadable.  .  .  . 

Such  is  my  reading  of  the  German  horoscope. 

I  doubt  if  there  will  be  nearly  so  much  writing 
and  reading  about  the  Great  War  in  the  latter  half 
of  the  twentieth  century  as  there  w^as  about  Na- 
poleon at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth.  The  Great 
War  is  essentially  undramatic;  it  has  no  hero,  it 
has  no  great  leaders.  It  is  a  story  of  the  common- 
sense  of  humanity  suppressing  certain  tawdry  and 
vulgar  ideas  and  ambitions,  and  readjusting  much 


290  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

that  was  wasteful  and  unjust  in  social  and  eco- 
nomic organisation.  It  is  the  story  of  how  the 
spirit  of  man  was  awakened  by  a  nightmare  of  a 
War  Lord.  .  .  .  The  nightmare  will  fade  out  of 
mind,  and  the  spirit  of  man  will  set  about  the  reali- 
ties of  life  with  revivified  energies,  will  set  itself 
to  the  establishment  of  order,  the  increase  of  knowl- 
edge and  creation.  Amid  these  realities  the  great 
qualities  of  the  Germans  mark  them  for  a  distin- 
guished and  important  role. 

§  3 

The  primary  business  of  the  Allies  is  not  reconcil- 
iation with  Germany.  Their  primary  concern  is 
to  organise  a  great  League  of  Peace  about  the 
world  with  which  the  American  States  and  China 
may  either  unite  or  establish  a  permanent  under- 
standing. Separate  attempts  to  restore  friendship 
with  the  Germans  will  threaten  the  unanimity  of 
the  League  of  Peace,  and  perhaps  renew  the  in- 
trigues and  evils  of  the  Germanic  dynastic  system 
which  this  war  may  destroy.  The  essential  resto- 
ration of  Germany  must  be  the  work  of  German 
men  speaking  plain  sense  to  Germans,  and  inducing 
their  country  to  hold  out  its  hand  not  to  this  or 
that  suspicious  neighbour  but  to  mankind.     A  mili- 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      291 

tarist  Germany  is  a  Germany  self -condemned  to 
isolation  or  world  empire.  A  Germany  which  has 
returned  to  the  ways  of  peace,  on  the  other  hand, 
will  be  a  country  that  cannot  be  kept  out  of  the 
system  of  civilisation.  The  tariff  wall  cannot  but 
be  lowered,  the  watchful  restrictions  cannot  but  be 
discontinued  against  such  a  Germany.  Europe  is 
a  system  with  its  heart  half  used,  so  long  as  Ger- 
many is  isolated.  The  German  population  is  and 
will  remain  the  central  and  largest  mass  of  people 
in  Europe.  That  is  a  fact  as  necessary  as  the 
Indianism  of  India.  To  reconstruct  modern  civil- 
isation without  Germany  would  be  a  colossal  arti- 
ficial task  that  would  take  centuries  to  do.  It  is 
inconceivable  that  Germany  will  stand  out  of  Eu- 
ropeanism  so  long  as  to  allow  the  trade  routes  of 
the  world  to  be  entirely  deflected  from  her.  Her 
own  necessities  march  with  the  natural  needs  of 
the  world. 

So  that  I  give  the  alliance  for  the  isolation  of 
Germany  at  the  outside  a  life  of  forty  years  before 
it  ceases  to  be  necessary  through  the  recovered 
willingness  of  the  Germans  to  lay  aside  aggression. 

But  this  is  not  a  thing  to  be  run  at  too  hastily. 
It  may  be  easily  possible  to  delay  this  national  gen- 
eral reconciliation  of  mankind  by  an  unreal  effu- 


292  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

sion.  There  will  be  no  advantage  in  forcing  the 
feelings  of  the  late  combatants.  It  is  ridiculous  to 
suppose  that  for  the  next  decade  or  so,  whatever 
happens,  any  Frenchmen  are  going  to  feel  genial 
about  the  occupation  of  their  northeast  provinces, 
or  any  Belgians  smile  at  the  memory  of  Dinant  or 
Louvain,  or  the  Poles  or  Serbs  forgive  the  desola- 
tion of  their  country,  or  any  English  or  Eussians 
take  a  humorous  view  of  the  treatment  their  peo- 
ple have  had  as  prisoners  in  Germany.  So  long  as 
these  are  living  memories  they  will  keep  a  barrier 
of  dislike  about  Germany.  Nor  is  it  probable  that 
the  ordinary  German  is  going  to  survey  the  revised 
map  of  Africa  with  a  happy  sense  of  relief,  or 
blame  no  one  but  himself  for  the  vanished  pros- 
perity of  1914.  That  is  asking  too  much  of  hu- 
manity. Unless  I  know  nothing  of  Germany,  Ger- 
many will  bristle  with  "  denkmals  "  to  keep  open 
all  such  sores.  The  dislike  of  Germany  by  the  al- 
lied nations  will  be  returned  in  the  hostility  of  a 
thwarted  and  disappointed  people.  Not  even  the 
neutrals  will  be  aloof  from  these  hostilities  and  re- 
sentments. The  world  will  still  be  throwing  much 
passion  into  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  the  sinking 
of  the  Lusitania  in  1950  or  so.  There  will  be  a  bit- 
terness in  the  memories  of  this  and  the  next  gen- 


THE  OUTLOOK  FOR  THE  GERMANS      293 

eration,  that  will  make  the  spectacle  of  ardent 
Frenchmen  or  Englishmen  or  Belgians  or  Russians 
embracing  Germans  with  gusto  —  unpleasant  to 
say  the  least  of  it.  We  may  bring  ourselves  to 
understand,  we  may  bring  ourselves  to  a  cold  and 
reasonable  forgiveness,  we  may  suppress  our  Sir 
George  Makgills  and  so  forth,  but  it  will  take  sixty 
or  seventy  years  for  the  two  sides  in  this  present 
war  to  grow  kindly  again.  Let  us  build  no  false 
hopes  nor  pretend  to  any  false  generosities.  These 
hatreds  can  die  out  only  in  one  way :  by  the  passing 
of  a  generation,  by  the  dying  out  of  the  wounded 
and  the  wronged.  Our  business,  our  unsentimen- 
tal business,  is  to  set  about  establishing  such  con- 
ditions that  they  will  so  die  out.  And  that  is  the 
business  of  the  sane  Germans  too.  Behind  the  bar- 
riers this  war  will  have  set  up  between  Germany 
and  anti-Germany,  the  intelligent  men  in  either 
camp  must  prepare  the  ultimate  peace  they  will 
never  enjoy,  must  work  for  the  days  when  their  sons 
at  least  may  meet  as  they  themselves  can  never  meet, 
without  accusation  or  resentment,  upon  the  com- 
mon business  of  cho  World  Pv^i^c-i.  That  is  not  to 
be  done  by  any  conscientioas  sentimentalities,  any 
slobbering  denials  of  anforgettable  injuries.  We 
want  no  Pro-German  Leagues  any  more  than  we 


294  WHAT  IS  COMING? 

want  Anti-German  Leagues.     We  want  patience  — 
and  silence. 

My  reason  insists  upon  the  inevitableness  and 
necessity  of  this  ultimate  reconciliation.  I  will  do 
no  more  than  I  must  to  injure  Germany  further, 
and  I  will  do  all  that  I  can  to  restore  the  unity  of 
mankind.  None  the  less  is  it  true  that  for  me  for 
all  the  rest  of  my  life  the  Germans  I  shall  meet, 
the  German  things  I  shall  see,  will  be  smeared  with 
the  blood  of  my  people  and  my  friends  that  the  wil- 
fulness of  Germany  has  spilt. 


THE  END 


P^iiaj:^  in  the  United'  Sta^ea  of  America. 


T 


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